Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer
The Way In (2000)
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer
The Way In (2000)
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer
Playboy interview (1996)
Context: Listen, you can't turn really bright people into robots. You can turn dumb people into robots, but that's true in every society and system. I don't know what to do with dumb people, but we must try to educate them along with the sharp kids. You teach a kid to read and write by the second grade, and the rest will take care of itself. To solve the drug problem, we have to start at the root — first grade. If a boy has all the toys in his head that reading can give him, and you hook him into science fiction, then you've got the future secured.
Isaac Asimov book Runaround
"Runaround" in Astounding Science Fiction (March 1942); later published in I, Robot (1950)
The Three Laws of Robotics (1942)
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
Foreword
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.
Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true. Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside. His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience.
Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist
Two Sermons (1853), Sermon II : Of the Position and Duty of a Minister.
Context: If you lend me your ears, I shall doubtless take your hearts too. That I may not lead you into any wrong, let me warn you of this. Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you be true to God.
“And do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"But you didn't think a robot would, right?”
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author
"Right."
"The Inquest" in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1983)
“Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.