Quotes about space
page 30

“The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Marcus Aurelius: The Meditations (p. 82)
Classics Revisited (1968)

Life, Future

“I’ve read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev’s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in a way that don’t come across as faults.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Fifteen: Whiskey, Torture, Turgenoev

Way, Lying, Fashion, Reading

“Throughout history, there have been many scientists who believed the universe was “created” in the same sense that Christian proponents of natural sciences still believe today. But those men who believed in God and made historic contributions to science still relied on necessarily natural methodology because that is the only way science can progress. In many cases, they found natural explanations for things previously believed to be miraculous, and they only succeeded when they did not allow religious convictions to subvert or inhibit their inquiry. None of them were able to vindicate the Bible stories, and their efforts to do so only ever indicated another origin. Thus these men wouldn’t have supported creationism as we know it today, and many of them wouldn’t have been creationists if they’d understood evolution.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, Way, History

“Freedom is a universal human desire… and a force for peace and prosperity in the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

"The Struggle for Human Rights and Human Freedom" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW33AxBe06o (June 2013) 2010s, 2013

World, Peace, Freedom

“It was surely no fault of his that the universe seemed to him real; perhaps — as Mr. Emerson justly said — it was so.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

298
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men, God, Way

“We build models to increase productivity, under the justified assumption that it's cheaper to manipulate the model than the real thing. Models then enable cheaper exploration and reasoning about some universe of discourse. One important application of models is to understand a real, abstract, or hypothetical problem domain that a computer system will reflect. This is done by abstraction, classification, and generalization of subject-matter entities into an appropriate set of classes and their behavior.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Source: MDA Distilled. Principles of Model-Driven Architecture, 2003, p. 35-36.

Behavior, Understanding, Problem

“We can be as sure as we could probably need be that neither this enormous explosion that set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us at a great rate, nor this amazingly complex billion year period of evolution, we can be pretty certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not the objects of either of these plans. These plans don’t know we’re here. I’m sorry to say, wouldn’t know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with the equipment, intellectual and moral, that we’ve been given, or that we've acquired, or that is innate to us.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs. 2000s, 2007

“It is hard to understand how this infinitely dense singularity can evaporate into nothing. For matter inside the black hole leak out into the universe requires that it travel faster than the speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 85

Travel, Understanding, Light, Speed

“[Mathematics were] scarce looked upon as Academical studies but rather Mechanical… And among more than two hundred students (at that time) in our college, I do not know of any two (perhaps not any) who had more of Mathematicks than I, (if so much) which was then but little; and but very few, in that whole university. For the study of Mathematicks was at that time more cultivated in London than in the universities.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

(1635) as quoted by W. W. Rouse Ball, A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge https://books.google.com/books?id=Pl32YkKFIhsC (1889) pp. 41-42.

Mathematics, Study, Time

“When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe — never permit an "open-minded" approach… If they enrolled, they're aboard, and if they're aboard they're here on the same terms as the rest of us — win or die in the attempt. Never let them be half minded about being Scientologists. … When Mrs. Pattycake comes to us to be taught, turn that wandering doubt in her eye into a fixed, dedicated glare. … The proper instruction attitude is, "We'd rather have you dead than incapable."”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Scientology Policy Letters

Dead

“The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form itself into. The mind is in a fluid state, but it hardens up gradually to the consistency of rock or iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an old man, but as he has begun he will proceed and go on to the last.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Life, Study, Season

“There is no conceivable reason why all colored people should not be treated according to the merits of each individual. It is not only the plain duty, but also the interest of us all, to have every colored man take the place for which he is best fitted by education, character, ability, manners, and culture. If others insist on keeping him in any lower and poorer place, it is not only his injury, but our universal loss. Yet which of our white congregations would take a colored pastor? How many of our New England villages would like to have colored postmasters, or doctors, or lawyers, or teachers in the public schools? A very slight difference in complexion suffices to keep a young man from getting a place as policeman, or fireman, or conductor, even on the horse cars. The trades-unions are closed against him, and so are many of our stores; while those which admit him are obliged to refuse him promotion on account of the unwillingness of white men to serve under him.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Men, People, Education, School

“Yes, we had one and all left our native planets in order to discover whether, regarding the cosmos as a whole, the spirit which we all in our hearts obscurely knew and haltingly prized, the spirit which on Earth we sometimes call humane, was Lord of the Universe, or outlaw; almighty, or crucified. And now it was becoming clear to us that if the cosmos had any lord at all, he was not that spirit but some other, whose purpose in creating the endless fountain of worlds was not fatherly toward the beings that he had made, but alien, inhuman, dark.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter VI: Intimations of the Star Maker (p. 71)

World, Heart

“We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what's happening in the distant past why should we need more?”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

"The Anthropic Universe" http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-anthropic-universe/3302686 (Feb 18, 2006) Australia's Science Show, with Martin Redfern moderating excerpts from several scientists, including Wheeler. Audio recording http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2006/02/ssw_20060218_1200.mp3 and transcript available. See also same show at WayBack Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20080616183602/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1572643.htm Internet archive.org.

Sense, Distant, Past

“One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Truth, Study, Parting

““I'm tired of being what everyone else has made me,” I said. “I want to be myself.”
“Don’t be a child.”
I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. “What?”
“You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I’m tired of your whining.””

N. K. Jemisin book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Source: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), Chapter 22 (p. 299)

“When things don't change any longer, that's the end result of entropy, the heat-death of the universe. The more things go on moving, interrelating, conflicting, changing, the less balance there is—and the more life. I'm pro-life, George. Life itself is a huge gamble against the odds, against all odds! You can't try to live safely, there's no such thing as safety. Stick your neck out of your shell, then, and live fully! It's not how you get there, but where you get to that counts. What you're afraid to accept, here, is that we're engaged in a really great experiment, you and I. We're on the brink of discovering and controlling, for the good of all mankind, a whole new force, an entire new field of antientropic energy, of the life-force, of the will to act, to do, to change!”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 9 (Haber)

Life, Death, Change

“When I was a professor at the University of Austin in Texas, it had such a luxurious swimming–pool that one end had a raised ledge in the water specifically so you could drag a deckchair in and lie on it and read. But the problem is that the students are all so young and the thing with Americans is that when they're fit, they are so fit. So you feel like someone's granny pottering about in the slow lane.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

World of Colm Tóibín, writer http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9108553/World-of-Colm-Toibin-writer.html, The Daily Telegraph (27 February 2012)

Lie, Feeling, Problem, Water

“Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit — the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge. From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. … This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 6: Cedar Keys, pages 160-161

Pain, Star, Knowledge, Appearance

“Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 21

Truth, Imagination, Thinking

“I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph 2 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, r, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose

Love, Life, Pain, Hate

“The Church has been reproached with endeavouring to appropriate to itself all those professorships in our Universities which are connected with science: it is however certain that the larger portion of these ill-remunerated offices have been filled by clergymen.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225

Science

“If you want to take drugs and drink alcohol and smoke, that's your business. But if you want me to pay for it when you get sick, that's my business. If we're going to have universal health care, why don't we have universal auto care? I mean, if you run your car into a tree, the government buys you a new car. You back into somebody in the parking lot and scratch it. Hey, that's OK. The government will fix it. You blow up your engine 'cause you forgot to change the oil. That's OK. The government will fix it. Why don't we have universal house care? See, if you've ever owned a house and rented it out to somebody else, you will understand. How many know what I'm talking about? Renters just don't look at it the same way owners do, do they? And when it's your responsibility to take care of your health, you'll take care of it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Health, Alcohol, Cars, Way

“A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river — but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself — a thing that went on caring.”

Clifford D. Simak book Way Station

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 35

Secret

“And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

People, Faith

“Thus, the distance between any two galaxies increases in time, creating the illusion of mechanical motion. But in reality, galaxies just sit there, contemplating the spectacle of the universe creating more and more space in between them.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 87
Faster than the Speed of Light

Reality, Time

“The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: (1940), XVIII

History, Time

“Throughout Bakounin's writings there appears again and again the plea for "terrible, total, inexorable, and universal destruction.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p. 92

Appearance

“It is with Bernhard Riemann's work that we finally have the mathematical glasses to explore such worlds of the mind. And now my journey through the abstract world of 20th century mathematics has revealed that maths is the true language that the universe is written in. They key to understanding the world around us. Mathematicians aren't motivated by money and material gain, or even by practical applications of their work. For us it's the glory of solving one of the great unsolved problems that have outwitted previous generations of mathematicians. David Hilbert was right; it’s the unsolved problems of mathematics which make it a living subject. Which obsess each new generation of mathematicians. Despite all the things we've discovered over the last 7 millennia, there are still many things we don't understand. And its Hilbert’s call of "We must know, we will know" which drives mathematics.”

Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics

Conclusion in BBC's The Story of Maths, episode 4

Money, World, Mathematics, Motivation

“Why do I think that Turing's paper "On computable numbers" is so important? Well, in my opinion it's a paper on epistemology, because we only understand something if we can program it, as I will explain in more detail later. And it's a paper on physics, because what we can actually compute depends on the laws of physics in our particular universe and distinguishes it from other possible universes. And it's a paper on ontology, because it shows that some real numbers are uncomputable, which I shall argue calls into question their very existence, their mathematical and physical existence.”

Gregory Chaitin (1947) Argentinian mathematician and computer scientist

"Epistemology as information theory: From Leibniz to Omega." https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0506552 arXiv preprint math/0506552 (2005). p. 3

Law, Mathematics, Understanding, Question

“There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"The Progress of a Biographer", p. 2
The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Soul, Imagination

“While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Religion and Science: Irreconcilable? (1948)

Search, Knowledge, Science, Perfection

“After the first day there [In 1961, at the invitation of Tatyana Grosman, Frankenthaler ventured out to Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Grosman's Long Island printmaking studio, and began making lithographs for the first time] I felt no hesitation. I was very committed. All I had to do was start work on that print. It was a whole new road - and a very connected road.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Artists and Prints: Masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Deborah Wye; The Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p. 146 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=69050 1990s - 2000s

Art, Time

“Bacteria represent the world's greatest success story. They are today and have always been the modal organisms on earth; they cannot be nuked to oblivion and will outlive us all. This time is their time, not the “age of mammals” as our textbooks chauvinistically proclaim. But their price for such success is permanent relegation to a microworld, and they cannot know the joy and pain of consciousness. We live in a universe of trade-offs; complexity and persistence do not work well as partners.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"An Earful of Jaw", p. 98
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Pain, Age, World, Time

“The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 342 (1974)
Judicial opinions

“I was a model—someone saw my picture—and I landed a stock contract at Universal. Because of my experience, I received a higher salary than the other girls starting out—and during my first week in Hollywood, I got to meet and have dinner with Greta Garbo!”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

Girl

“I never did a western while at Universal. I did a variety of roles, including ‘The Climax’ with Boris Karloff. There is a huge painting of me in the film. When it was over, Ernest Pagano, one of the producers, put it up in his office. It took up most of the wall! I wasn’t happy because people thought we were having an affair—which I never have and never would do.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People, Painting, Happiness

“The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically intercommunicated wisdom--the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals--qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers--in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity, and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Love, Wisdom, God, Truth

“And whatever we find on Mars, the doors will be open to the next Odyssey, to something so many have instinctually felt for so long, something which through music I remember -- that at the dawn of creation the seeds of life were likely scattered far and wide across the endless skies, and that science will continue to show us how we are connected, no different than the universe itself.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/vangelis01.html
Vangelis: Mythodea
2001
NASA
2001

Life, Music, Science

“Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties, Freud teaches us to blame our parents, and astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn't have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Pathways to Bliss (2004), p. 104

Life, Parent

“With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun-lake, feeling yourself contained in one of Nature's most sacred chambers, withdrawn from the sterner influences of the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual, and you seem dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm, terrestrial, human love, delightfully substantial and familiar.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Glacier Meadows of the Sierra http://books.google.com/books?id=zj2gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA478", Scribner's Monthly, volume XVII, number 4 (February 1879) pages 478-483 (at page 479); modified slightly and reprinted in The Mountains of California http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_mountains_of_california/ (1894), chapter 7: The Glacier Meadows 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894)

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Mountain

“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Witnessing, 2007-01-03, 2012-08-16, http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/#Witnessing]

Love, Men, Idea, Courage

“On campuses across this country, embedded in the leadership of every radical "anti-war" protest group, are organizations that promote the culture of Islamic terrorism and its anti-Western, anti-Israeli and anti-American agendas. One that will serve as an example for the others is the radical Muslim Student Association (MSA). The Muslim Student Association is an organization financed by the Saudis and also by student funds at every university where it operates. The ideas and enthusiasms that it promotes among impressionable college students should give every American cause for concern.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html, "As a former 'Radical,' I see the threat of Militant Islam on our Campuses,", jewishworldreview.com, April 08, 2003, 2010-01-04]
2003

War, Idea, Country

“It certainly must be an immense pleasure to God to see a man work patiently for nothing. It must please the Most High to see a slave with his wife and child sold upon the auction block. If this slave escapes from slavery and is pursued, how musical the baying of the bloodhound must be to the ears of this most merciful God. All this is simply infamous. On the throne of this universe there sits no such monster.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God, Pleasure, Music

“The very idea of a near-infinite array of universes made his head swim.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 212

Idea

“The current cosmological paradigm, the cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant, requires that the mass-energy of the Universe be dominated by invisible components: dark matter and dark energy. An alternative to these dark components is that the law of gravity be modified on the relevant scales. A test of these ideas is provided by the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation (BTFR), an empirical relation between the observed mass of a galaxy and its rotation velocity. Here, I report a test using gas rich galaxies for which both axes of the BTFR can be measured independently of the theories being tested and without the systematic uncertainty in stellar mass that affects the same test with star dominated spirals. The data fall precisely where predicted a priori by the modified Newtonian dynamics.”

Stacy McGaugh Novel Test of Modified Newtonian Dynamics with Gas Rich Galaxies

[21 March 2011, Novel test of modified Newtonian dynamics with gas rich galaxies, Physical Review Letters, 106, 12, 121303, 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.121303]

Law, Star, Idea

“In his famous book, What is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger asks, "What is the source of the order in biology?" He arrives at the idea that it depends upon quantum mechanics and a microcode carried in some sort of aperiodic crystal—which turned out to be DNA and RNA—so he is brilliantly right. But if you ask if he got to the essence of what makes something alive, it's clear that he didn't. Although today we know bits and pieces about the machinery of cells, we don't know what makes them living things. However, it is possible that I've stumbled upon a definition of what it means for something to be alive.
For the better part of a year and a half, I've been keeping a notebook about what I call autonomous agents. An autonomous agent is something that can act on its own behalf in an environment. Indeed, all free-living organisms are autonomous agents. Normally, when we think about a bacterium swimming upstream in a glucose gradient we say that the bacterium is going to get food. That is to say, we talk about the bacterium teleologically, as if it were acting on its own behalf in an environment. It is stunning that the universe has brought about things that can act in this way. How in the world has that happened?”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

The Adjacent Possible: A Talk with Stuart Kauffman, 2003

Life, Books, World, Food

“It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 68

Cry

“There are two elements of Hayek’s background that justify our considering him an Austrian economist: first, that he was raised and went to university in Vienna in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and second, that when he finally decided on economics as his field of study, he was trained within the Austrian tradition in economics.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and the Austrian tradition", in Edward Feser(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Study, Training

“I’m asking you to do an unpleasant thing for a decent motive. You don’t want to do it, and I understand how you feel, but I’m trying to get you to see that your personal moral code isn’t always the highest factor. In wartime, a soldier shoots to kill because the universe imposes that situation on him. It may be an unjust war, and that might be his brother in the ship he’s aiming at, but the war is real and he has his role.”
“Where’s the room for free will in this mechanical universe of yours, Charles?”
“There isn’t any. That’s why I say the universe stinks.”
“We have no freedom at all?”
“The freedom to wriggle a little on the hook.”
“Have you felt this way all your life?”
“Most of it,” Boardman said.
“When you were my age?”

Robert Silverberg book The Man in the Maze

“Even earlier.”
Source: The Man in the Maze (1969), Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 73)

Life, War, Age, Way

“Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism

Faith, Feeling, Support

“Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also, as we have suggested before, rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

2000s, After Theory (2003)

Love, Death, Truth, Religion

“You are god in your own universe. There is no god unless it is self.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[39, Psychobabble: The Failure of Modern Psychology - and the Biblical Alternative, Richard L. Ganz, 1993, Crossway Books, 0891077340]
Attributed

God

“It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and thereafter never entirely goes away. Violence and hatred, and the fear of our own inability to control them in ourselves, are a fundamental part of our birthright, along with altruism, creativity, tenderness, pity and love. It therefore requires an immense act of hypocrisy to stigmatize our young adults and teenagers as agents of deviance and disorder. It requires a policy of dishonesty about and blindness to our own histories, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals who were troubled as teenagers, and who will always be troubled, by the same dark impulses. It also requires that favorite tool of the hypocritical, dishonest and fearful: the suppression of constitutional rights.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/opinion/13CHAB.html?ex=1397188800&en=e08e585ef55c305e&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND, New York Times (April 13, 2004)

Love, Children, Age, Fear

“I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and the tyranny suffered by our universities, intellectuals, and the media. Like many others in our universities, I felt compelled to join the struggle for freedom. What we experience is a decades-old tyranny, that cannot tolerate freedom of speech and thought. In the name of religion, it restricts and punishes science, intellect, and even love. It labels as a threat to national security and toxic to society whatever is not compatible with its political and economic interests. It considers punishing unwelcome ideas as a positive thing. It does not tolerate differences of opinion; it responds to logic not by logic, discussion or dialog, but by suppression. By tyranny I mean a ruling power that tries to make only one voice—the voice of a ruling minority in Iran—dominant, with no regard for pluralism in the society. By tyranny I mean a judiciary that disregards even the Islamic Republic’s own constitution, and sentences intellectuals, writers, journalists, and political and civil activists to long prison terms, without due process and trial in a court of law. … By tyranny I mean power-holders who believe they stand above the law and who disregard justice and the urgent demands of the human conscience.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Love, Religion, Justice, Law

“There is never a rational reason for a man to rejoice that a certain pretty girl exists and that he has found her. The experience, however, is universal.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Time Tunnel (1964), Chapter 2 (p. 19).

Girl

“We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent "elementary parts" of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

"On the Intuitive Understanding of Nonlocality as Implied by Quantum Theory", Foundations of Physics Vol 5 (1975)

World, Reality, Parting

“I would be pleased indeed, if the universe were full of blazing ovens, and concentration camps, and people deported.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Source: Journal of 1969, p. 118

People

“Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 88

“In the summer camp mentality of American universities, the ferocity of genuine intellectual debate would just seem like spoiling everyone’s fun. Ambitious humanities professors go about the business behind a brick wall of “theory,” which they imagine is the dernier cri, but which has long been out of fashion, even in Paris. Drab, uncultivated philistines, without broad knowledge of the arts, have seized the top jobs in the Ivy League, simply because they have the right opinions and know the right people. In the past twenty years, conferences became the infernal engine driving the academic profession. The conference crowd, an international party circuit of literary luminaries ever on the move, was put together by the new humanities centers. These programs had the initially laudable aim of fostering interdisciplinary exchanges outside the repressive framework of the conservative, static and over-tenured university departments. But the epidemic of French theory was abroad in the world. The humanities centers quickly became careerist stockyards, where greedy speculation and insider trading were as much the rules of the game as on Wall Street.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. 101

People, World, Art, Imagination

“I have an ongoing operational preference, rather than an end goal. I was raised in a prison, as a war hostage. War is illogical, wasteful. Wars become less frequent the more incentives rational beings have to cooperate rather than to compete. A free and peaceful commonwealth embracing all rational entities of this and every other universe, Cosmic and Chaotic, mortal and immortal, will deter wars.
The primary requirement, however, is freedom: universal freedom. If there are other people out there, raised in imprisonment as I was, I have a duty to liberate them, for the same reason why I would have welcomed any outside liberator who would have attempted to free me. We were in the most pleasant prison imaginable. It was still unacceptable. The present condition of the universe is unacceptable. Anything I can do, large or small, along these lines, I will do. Other problems are secondary, and may resolve themselves once this primary problem is solved.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 3, “Within Sight of the Land of Freedom” Section 1 (pp. 42-43)

War, People, Peace, Imagination

“For Moses, that God should "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation" (Exod. 20:5) is an unacceptable form of group punishment akin to the morally indiscriminate punishment of Sodom. Challenging God's pronouncement of the punishment of the sons for the sins of the fathers, Moses argues with God, against God, and in the name of God. Moses engages God with fierce moral logic:
Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteousness of Abraham and the idol worship of his father Terach. Does it make moral sense to punish the child for the transgressions of the father? Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteous deeds of King Hezekiah, who sprang from the loins of his evil father King Achaz. Does Hezekiah deserve Achaz's punishment? Consider the nobility of King Josiah, whose father Amnon was wicked. Should Josiah inherit the punishment of Amnon? (Num. Rabbah, Hukkat XIX, 33)
Trained to view God as an unyielding authoritarian proclaiming immutable commands, we might expect that Moses will be severely chastised for his defiance. Who is this finite, errant, fallible, human creature to question the explicit command of the author of the Ten Commandments? The divine response to Moses, according to the rabbinic moral imagination, is arresting:
By your life Moses, you have instructed Me. Therefore I will nullify My words and confirm yours. Thus it is said, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers."”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Deut. 24:16
Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

Life, Death, God, Children

“Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus. He is bound by pettiness.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Two, World Without Values

Feeling, History, Tree

“Scientists, operating in the various disciplines, are encapsulated in their private universe, and it is difficult to get word from one cocoon to the other.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

1950s, "General systems theory," 1956

“These seven stages we shall name as follows:
1. Mixture
2. Gestation
3. Expansion
4. Age of Conflict
5. Universal Empire
6. Decay
7. Invasion”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 146

Age

“I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit. I do not think that Liberalism in any circumstances can cut itself off from this fertile field of social effort, and I would recommend you not to be scared in discussing any of these proposals, just because some old woman comes along and tells you they are Socialistic.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 154
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, Thinking, Effort

“He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Act I.
The Good-Natured Man (1768)

“To the Greek harmony was of supreme importance, and if the triglyphs represented the harmonic scale… their meaning and use is abundantly explained. …The universal admiration which Greek proportions have always excited proves that the method of obtaining them was correct.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

“We are blessed with a spirit that is one with the spirit of the universe. This spirit is called "reiseishin". The moon is clearly reflected in the water when the water is calm. In the same way when our mind and body are unified and calm, our "reiseishin" manifests itself completely. Once this happens all suffering and wicked desires fall away, and the universal spirit of love and protection for all things appears in us. Let us strive to realise our "reiseishin".”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

17 : Reiseishin - the universal mind
Ki Sayings (2003)

Love, Way, Suffering, Water

“There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.”

Joseph Conrad book Nostromo

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 9
Nostromo (1904)

“The next possessors of nuclear weapons may be Iran, North Korea, or possibly some terrorist bodies. Is there any hope that they will have absorbed the nearly universal inhibition against the use of nuclear weapons, or will at least be inhibited by the recognition that the taboo enjoys widespread acclaim?”

Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) American economist

Nobel Prize lecture (2005)

Hope

“You see, this universe we inhabit is made up of billions of galaxies—literally beyond counting—and this is only one universe.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 20

“In recent times, we are becoming increasingly more aware of the cosmic dimension of salvation. The destiny of humankind and that of the cosmos are inextricably intertwined. In the past, Christians often thought of their relationship to the world in terms of domination, possession, use and enjoyment. There was little awe and wonder before the mystery of the universe. This arrogant and irreverent attitude to creation is largely responsible for the serious ecological crisis was are facing today.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On the Church

World, Time, Past

“There are many other organizations beside the government and the firm. But all of them, whether political party or revolutionary movement, university or church, share the common characteristics of the need for collective action and the allocation of resources through nonmarket methods.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 1, Rationality: Individual And Social, p. 26

“It's a risky business to send a picture out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent who could extend their affliction universally!”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

As quoted in Conversations with Artists (1957) by Selden Rodman, p. 92; later published in 'Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956' in Writings on Art : Mark Rothko (2006) ed. Miguel López-Remiro ISBN 0300114400
1950's

World, Business, Affliction

“Must I not here express my wonder that any one should exist who persuades himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles carried along by their own impulse and weight, and that a universe so beautiful and so admirably arrayed is formed from the accidental concourse of those particles? I do not understand why the man who supposes that to have been possible should not also think that if a countless number of the forms of the one and twenty letters, whether in gold or any other material, were to be thrown somewhere, it would be possible, when they had been shaken out upon the ground, for the annals of Ennius to result from them so as to be able to be read consecutively,—a miracle of chance which I incline to think would be impossible even in the case of a single verse.”
Hic ego non mirer esse quemquam, qui sibi persuadeat corpora quaedam solida atque individua vi et gravitate ferri mundumque effici ornatissimum et pulcherrimum ex eorum corporum concursione fortuita? Hoc qui existimat fieri potuisse, non intellego, cur non idem putet, si innumerabiles unius et viginti formae litterarum vel aureae vel qualeslibet aliquo coiciantur, posse ex is in terram excussis annales Enni, ut deinceps legi possint, effici; quod nescio an ne in uno quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 37
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Beauty, Understanding, Thinking, Chance

“There is still and must ever be a tremendous amount of manual labor, but to a large extent this has become specialized and too often would be designated correctly as drudgery. The opportunity for education of the mind, however, has greatly increased until it has become well-nigh universal. School and college athletics have become necessary. With the development of our industrial and commercial life, there are more and more those who are engaged in purely clerical activities. All of this makes it more necessary than ever that we should stimulate every possible interest in out of door health-giving recreation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Life, Health, Education, School

“And now I am obliged to tell you what it is that clearly distinguishes Futurism from anarchism.
The latter, denying the infinite principle of human evolution, brings its forward-looking viewpoint to a halt in the ideal of universal peace, a stupid paradise of people caressing in open fields or beneath billowing palm trees.
We, instead, affirm that one of Futurism’s absolute principles is the continuous development and unending progress, both bodily and intellectual, of man.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, War, the Only Hygiene of the World' (1911)
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 84

People, Stupidity, Peace, Tree

“None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems "would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us."”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Speaking at a professional conference on military transformation, urging the Pentagon to invest in efforts that would "diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies." Breaking the Warrior Code (February 2005) http://spectator.org/archives/2005/02/11/breaking-the-warrior-code

World, Help, Training

“Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 54

“Read one page of Stephen Hawking about the event horizon, about the possibility that we will soon know, not where the universe originated, but where it is tended, and the event horizon to which we may all be headed. There is more to inspire awe in one page of Stephen Hawking, than in any of the fantasies of Tertullian, imagining that he could go to the window of heaven, when he was promoted there, and look down, for his consolation, on the torments of the damned. There is much more to be awe-inspired by, in a page of Hawking, than in any number of burning bushes, or other such myths.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Imagination, Reading

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken, and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull http://books.google.com/books?id=E2kFAAAAQAAJ&dq=editions%3AVsZcW99fWPgC&pg=PA265#v=onepage&q&f=false (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. There are some differences in the version that appeared in The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1854), vol. 9, pp. 228-9 http://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false, most notably the words "or gallantry" instead of "and licentiousness". 1790s

People, World, Religion, Justice

“Thus we must carefully distinguish between two kinds of reality, one which has an individual character, and one which has a universal appearance... It is, however, wrong to think that the non-figurative artist finds impressions and emotions received from the outside useless, and regards it even as necessary to fight against them... It is equally wrong to think that the non-figurative artist creates through 'the pure intention of his mechanical process', that he makes 'calculated abstractions' and that he wish to 'suppress sentiment not only in himself but in the spectator'... It is thus clear that he has not become a mechanic, but that the progress of science, of technique, of machinery, of life as a whole, has only made him into a living machine, capable of realizing in a pure manner the essence of art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937); in 'Documents of modern Art' ed. Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn, Schulz, New York 1945
1930's

Life, Art, Thinking, Reality

“We are not sent into this world to walk it in solitude. We are born to love, as we are born to breathe and eat and drink. The babe is hardly separated from his mother’s womb before he stretches out a tiny clasping hand, and from that time forth he will constantly stretch out to touch the world that lies about him and the folk that dwell therein. The purpose of our growth in life is to bring us into unity with the universe into which we are born, to make us aware that we are not lonely individual meteors hurtling blindly through an abysmal dark, but living parts of a living whole. As we grow we learn to love more and more: first ourselves; then the family within the small kingdom of the home; then the school, the wider circle of friends, the home community, the college, and the still wider community of the nation; and finally, the greatest country of all, which has no boundaries this side of Hell, and perhaps not even there.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1942) " The Practice of The Love of God http://www.quaker.org/pamphlets/wpl1942a.html", William Penn Lecture, delivered at Arch Street Meetinghouse, Philadelphia, 1942. In: Friends' Intelligencer, Vol. 99 p. 231-261 1940s

Love, Life, World, School

“I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 108)

God, Idea

“More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

"When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf", Free Inquiry (1998)

Religion, Science

“History is a hermaphrodite with many distinguished lovers. We are neither mysteries nor strangers but the living breath of revelation made flesh by the unrestrained desires of a free and universal love. Universal me. Universal you.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(The Past Present and Future are One, p. 22).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Love, History, Lovers

“In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Death, Religion, Support, Time

“We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 129 (1972 edition)

Parting, Personality

“That isn't true. Zimbabwe is the most highly developed country in Africa. After South Africa, I want to see another country as highly developed. [We have 14 universities and a literacy rate of over 90%, the highest in Africa. ] And yet they talk about us as a fragile state. We have a bumper harvest, not only maize, but also tobacco and many other crops. We are not a poor country. If anyone wants to call us fragile, they can. You can also call America fragile.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

When asked by Anton du Plessis of the Institute for Security Studies if he agreed that Zimbabwe was a failed state, as quoted by Carien du Plessis in Mugabe: Zim 'is the most highly developed country in Africa after SA' http://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mugabe-zim-is-the-most-highly-developed-country-in-africa-after-sa-20170504, News 24 (4 May 2017) 2010s

Country

“The secrecy hasn't been enforced because the government thinks people are going to freak out when they find we're not alone in the universe, not in 1999. What will be shocking is the scandal of the last 50 years of ecosystem destruction, when we've had the technology to avoid it since the late '50s.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Undated

People, Thinking

“It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address at the Congress of the Association of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal, September 1, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Money, Democracy

“That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Gertrude (1910)

Life, Dreams

“Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being. Being, indeed! – there is no being, but a universal becoming of individualities, and Plato turned his back os truth when he turned towards his museum of specific ideals.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 1, sect. 5

Truth, Perfection

“A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight.
Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man’s relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

Truth, World, Hope, History

“If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35) 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Life, Men, Religion, Change