“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

— Henry David Thoreau

The Maine Woods http://thoreau.eserver.org/mewoods.html, Ktaadn, Pt. 6 (1848)

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Henry David Thoreau 385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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“I believe – as many scientists – that excessive hygienisation of life is responsible for the development of allergies. We avoid contact with microorganisms, our children live in almost sterile conditions, we wash our hands every now and then. Our immune system hardly comes into contact with bacteria, but it is still in contact with other antigens. So, if the organism gets bored, then these other antigens, completely harmless – a protein of milk, fish, or even strawberries – start to be treated as enemies.”

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“We forgot our searing power and lost it, as a result. This is not a searing power coming from an elite of artists that I’m talking about, this is an inherent human power that all of us have the possibility of contacting.”

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“We have developed contacts with five groups of insurgents. We are making these contacts in an attempt to bring them into the political process.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

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“Al-Buraq to Earth. Contact made.”

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“Some kind of contact with earth, however second hand or muffled, is still a prime necessity of humankind. We each of us have our own particular earthly paradise, a spot on earth for which our thoughts turn while our bodies are far distant, as the one place in all the world we would rather be..”

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“Our senses are not receptors so much as reactors and makers of different modalities of space. Perhaps touch is not just skin contact with things, but the very life of things in the mind.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 256

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“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

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Henry David Thoreau 385

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