“In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do and the society would kind of revel in that. We don't do that as much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral.”

— Hal Abelson

Source: Auditing Classes at M.I.T. http://education.mit.edu/tep/11125/opencourse/ - New York Times Interview, pg. 1

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater tha…" by Hal Abelson?

Hal Abelson photo

Hal Abelson 11

computer scientist 1947

Related quotes

“Pugin says in one of his works that had he a cathedral to build, one of the first things he would do would be to set up a lathe to turn the smaller columns.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 2

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good””

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

that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s
Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

“Acting is not what I do. It's what I am. It's my permanent, built-in cathedral.”

Anne Baxter (1923–1985) American actress

"Anne Baxter Dies at 62, 8 Days After Her Stroke" (1985)

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good” - that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky.”

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s
Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

“In the Middle Ages, people still reckoned on God - the cathedrals they built make that plain. But as time went by man tried to get rid of God. Marxism is nothing else than a gigantic attempt to put God on the shelf. They have tried to replace Him by technology. Scholars, in their attempt to prove that God does not exist, have resorted to the pen. And the masses have shouted: "Religion is the opium of the people.”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Not for me! We use it when we shouldn't. p. 157
Jesus Our Destiny

“In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don't see the person it affects. We don't see their face. We don't see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don't see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don't live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 222
Born a Crime

“The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of _____; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected.”

Anthony Trollope book The Warden

Source: The Warden (1855), Ch. 1, first lines

“What kind of a universe would it be if we could not do small kindnesses for one another?”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Marianne Trilogy, Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods (1988), Chapter 17 (p. 123)

“Socialists don't like people to do things for themselves. Socialists like to get people dependent on the state! You never build a great society that way.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Post-Prime Ministerial

“All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do?”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Related topics