“to Frank Westheimer on presenting an idea: (Harvard Gazette)”
“It may not work, but if it does, it will be a footnote to a footnote in the history of chemistry.”
Presumably in 1979 interview, section “Graduate Study at Harvard”, pp. 16–31, topic “Important conversation with James Conant.”
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Frank Westheimer2
American chemist 1912–2007Related quotes
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist
The Law of Mind (1892)
“It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas.”
Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches
"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm <br class="br">Context: The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.
“We need systems that reward the best ideas, not the best presenters.”
Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer
Guerrero, Aaron (interviewer), "Introvert Susan Cain Explains Why Shy People Thrive at Work," U.S. News and World Report, October 3, 2013
“I exempt you of being present in my idea of you.”
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 290
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Dispenso-a de comparecer na minha ideia de si.
Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 454.
Context: Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be "sub-critical," i. e., to correspond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are super-critical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole "theory" consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, "Can a machine be made to be super-critical?"
“She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.”
Jawaharlal Nehru book The Discovery of India
The Discovery of India (1946)
Context: The discovery of India — what have I discovered? It was presumptuous of me to imagine that I could unveil her and find out what she is today and what she was in the long past. Today she is four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feeling. If this is so in the present, how much more so to grasp that multitudinous past of innumerable successions of human beings. Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads. Overwhelmed again and again her spirit was never conquered, and today when she appears to be a plaything of a proud conqueror, she remains unsubdued and unconquered. About her there is the elusive quality of a legend of long ago; some enchantment seems to have held her mind. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.
