Quotes about basics
page 12

“The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.”

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

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 10

Law, Sense, Universe

“For every serious attempt to achieve integration of house to site you will find a thousand houses peppering the landscape and clearly demonstrating the builder's total disregard for even the most basic considerations of sun, wind, and view.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Sun, Housing

“The study of race differences in intelligence is an acid test case for psychology. Can behavioral scientists research this subject with the same freedom, objectivity, thoroughness, and scientific integrity with which they go about investigating other psychological phenomena? In short, can psychology be scientific when it confronts an issue that is steeped in social ideologies? In my attempts at self- analysis this question seems to me to be one of the most basic motivating elements in my involvement with research on the nature of the observed psychological differences among racial groups. In a recent article (Jensen, 1985b) I stated:I make no apology for my choice of research topics. I think that my own nominal fields of expertise (educational and differential psychology) would be remiss if they shunned efforts to describe and understand more accurately one of the most perplexing and critical of current problems. Of all the myriad subjects being investigated in the behavioral and social sciences, it seems to me that one of the most easily justified is the black- white statistical disparity in cognitive abilities, with its far reaching educational, economic, and social consequences. Should we not apply the tools of our science to such socially important issues as best we can? The success of such efforts will demonstrate that psychology can actually behave as a science in dealing with socially sensitive issues, rather than merely rationalize popular prejudice and social ideology.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

p. 258
Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), pp. 438-9

Education, Behavior, Intelligence, Motivation

“Slackware was great in that it did the one thing I want my distro to do more than anything, and that's stay the hell out of my way… Gentoo basically stays the hell out of your way… and Portage goes a long way to basically do exactly what you'd have done on Slackware without having to do it manually… maybe I'm getting greedy in my old age, but I don't want to compile my packages anymore.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Michael Larabel, "An Interview with Ryan C. Gordon" http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=203&num=1 Phoronix (2003-09-08)

Age, Way, Hell

“In the early days of the computer revolution computer designers and numerical analysts worked closely together and indeed were often the same people. Now there is a regrettable tendency for numerical analysts to opt out of any responsibility for the design of the arithmetic facilities and a failure to influence the more basic features of software. It is often said that the use of computers for scientific work represents a small part of the market and numerical analysts have resigned themselves to accepting facilities "designed" for other purposes and making the best of them. […] One of the main virtues of an electronic computer from the point of view of the numerical analyst is its ability to "do arithmetic fast."”

James H. Wilkinson (1919–1986) English mathematician

Need the arithmetic be so bad!
Some Comments from a Numerical Analyst (1971)

People, Failure, Parting

“I didn't really come into it expecting to make songs. It started just with random bits and pieces. I guess I thought there would be vocals, but I was thinking in terms of using little vocal shreds, and of making them part of the tapestry, not the main thing. But as soon as we had gone through the initial sketches, it became obvious that they could be quite direct. Nigel basically dragged me kicking and screaming toward the concept of them being actual songs.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/9346/RAAmain.html On making The Eraser.

Thinking, Parting

“Now and then I'll be a little brief with some of my band members. I won't talk or I'll refrain from talking to my band while we're rehearsing. But basically I am friendly with people. … I'll go on cold streaks. I'll work with a collaborator then I'll stop calling the collaborator for a couple weeks. I'll say I need a break from you for a couple weeks. But they're "OK, fine, fine, I'll see you in two weeks."”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

People

“I want to make sure you keep your eyes on the ball, that is, the two basic missions of a central bank. The first is maintaining macroeconomic stability: maintaining stable growth and keeping inflation low and stable. The principal policy tool for maintaining macroeconomic stability is monetary policy. In normal times, the Fed and other central banks use open market operations—purchases and sales of securities in markets—to move interest rates up or down, and in doing so try to create a more stable macroeconomic environment.
The second part of a central bank's mission is maintaining financial stability. Central banks are focused on trying to ensure that the financial system functions properly, and in particular, they want to prevent, if possible, and if not, to mitigate the effects of a financial crisis or a financial panic.”

Ben Bernanke (1953) American economist

Lecture 2: The Federal Reserve after World War II
The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis (2012)

Time, Parting

“Basically there is no difference between precognition and telepathy. The apparent difference is the result of an inadequate understanding of the nature of time.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 240, Page 3
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6

Understanding, Nature, Time

“Man has only the rights he can defend. Our most basic right is life. It's enshrined not only in our Constitution, but in the charter of the United Nations. The prohibition against taking a life is found in our most ancient texts and in the statutes of every nation. Every murder, whether in Brooklyn, Santiago, Rwanda or Kosovo, demands punishment by whatever legal means possible. Otherwise, the right to life is just an empty promise. The law against murder applies to all. No matter the perpetrator, the victim, or the country where the murder is committed. It is the one moral law that recognizes no national, racial or religious boundaries. It can tolerate no exception. There is one law. One law. And when that law is broken it is the duty of every officer of any court to rise in defense of that law, and bring their full power and diligence to bear against the law breaker. Because Man has only those rights he can defend. Only those rights.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Spoken by Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy in the Law & Order episode Vaya Con Dios.
Law & Order

Life, Law, Country

“The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Lecture "The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community" (1983); cited in Filters Against Folly (1985) by Garrett Hardin

“Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace.”

Jean Monnet (1888–1979) French political economist regarded by many as a chief architect of European unity

Speech by Robert Schuman (9 May 1950), written by Monnet
Jean Monnet 1888-1979

Peace, Decision, Country

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Alcohol, Beauty, Cars

“The philosophy of science is concerned with how you decide if a scientific finding is correct or true. You have to establish criteria to determine if the finding or theory is valid. Validity is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of science, but the fundamental problem in the philosophy of scientific administration is the question of value. Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities.”

Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006) American nuclear physicist

Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

Question, Problem, Decision, Science

“It had always been one of my convictions that Jews and Arabs could live together. Even as a child it never occurred to me that Jews might someday be living in Israel without Arabs, or separated from Arabs. On the contrary, for me it had always seemed perfectly normal for the two people to live and work side by side. That is the nature of life here and it always will be…. though Israel is a Jewish nation, it is, of course, not only a Jewish nation… I begin with the basic conviction that Jews and Arabs can live together. I have repeated that at every opportunity, not for journalists and not for popular consumption, but because I have never believed differently or thought differently, from my childhood on. I am not afraid of Arabs. I feel I can live with them. I believe I understand their problems. I know that we are both inhabitants of this land, and although the state is Jewish, that does not mean that Arabs should not be full citizens in every sense of the word.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon, ‎David Chanoff (2002) Warrior: An Autobiography p. 343, 542-3
2000s

Life, People, Feeling, Understanding

“Radical groups in the 1960s developed a reputation for factionalism: organizations split because of disagreements on details of strategy, and then treated each other as enemies. Or at least, such is the image people have of them, whether or not it was true.
The relationship between the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement is just the opposite of that picture. We disagree on the basic principles, but agree more or less on the practical recommendations. So we can and do work together on many specific projects. 'We don't think of the Open Source movement as an enemy. The enemy is proprietary software.”

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

1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)

People, Thinking

“Quantum field theory is the basic tool to understand the physics of the elementary constituents of matter. … It is both a very powerful and a very precise framework: using it we can describe physical processes in a range of energies going from the few millions electrovolts typical of nuclear physics to the thousands of billions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). And all this with astonishing precision.”

Luis Álvarez-Gaumé Spanish physicist

Source: An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Do We Need Quantum Field Theory After All?

Understanding

“The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue … that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication -- basic but insufficient.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10

Truth, Communication, Mathematics, Idea

“Physicists, for all their odd notions, are basically a conservative lot.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 4, Facing The Quantum Facts, p. 55

“Before a man can successfully plan a structure… he must study, from every possible angle, the ultimate purpose of his building. Attention must be directed to the basic structural concept before the mathematical process of calculation is undertaken.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Mathematics, Study

“I always felt, in looking at [the Cuban] situation, that it was wrong. And I now know why. It came to me one night in Mexico. China is communist, the same as Cuba, and yet we have no problem trading with China. In fact, today we can't get over there quick enough. The difference is simple: China welcomes our corporations. Cuba threw them out. It's a basic decision of corporate America: We will punish Cuba because Castro stuck it to us by nationalizing everything after he came to power. What other reason could there be? China is far more powerful but we now welcome them into global trade with open arms—as we should—while we continue this bitter, hostile policy towards Cuba. It must be because there are still people alive in the corporate world who got hammered by Fidel's revolution.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 6 (p. 111)

Hostility, People, World, Problem

“Roger: Yeah! There's one that we'll be supposedly filming when we get back from Europe. Not really sure exactly what's going to happen or anything in the video 'cause Vinnie and I had like a great idea for the video and they basically said that they would have to spend way too much money on it so.. there you go. They don't want to pay for the special effects that we were talking about. It's a bummer though. It would have been good.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

Money, Way, Idea

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love, People, Music, Guy

“Does not everyone who describes something he has experienced believe basically that whatever happens to him has some sort of relevance.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Sketchbook 1946-1949

“The government may be made up of clever, sensible people. But if they do not believe in basic human values, the more clever or shrewd they are the greater the tragedy they will create.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

People

“For anyone seeking meaning for his life a figure from Greek mythology comes to mind. It is that of Atlas, bearing with endless perseverance the weight of the heavens on his back. — Atlas, resolutely bearing his burden and accepting his responsibility that gives us the example we seek. To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life — these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.
And finally, the man who knows his purpose in life accepts praise humbly. He knows whatsoever talents we has were given him by the Lord and that these talents must be developed and used. In this way man renders thanks for the Lord's gift — and finds meaning in his life.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Way, Idea, Courage

“I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. The first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is a sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime..”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279

Bird, Change

“Some people have an ability to negotiate. It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

1980s

People, Art

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 330-31
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Confidence, History, Optimism, Nature

“Chemical reasoning, as used both in applications and in basic research, resembles a detective story in which tangible clues lead to a mental picture of events never directly witnessed by the detective.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

“A lot of that just comes from my upbringing. I have a tremendous mother and father, I grew up in the church, I have a very religious family. I’m not all about myself just because I know if it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t be able to go out there and compete anyway. So I never look at it as a selfish thing—I never want all the attention or want it to be about me, because I never want to get in to a situation where God has to humble me. I know for a fact that I am not doing it by myself; it is because of Him that I can compete over and over again. That’s basically how I grew up. I was blessed and fortunate to have a family like I have.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Quoted here http://collegefootballinsiders.blogspot.com/2009/04/q-javon-ringer-rb-michigan-st.htm

God, Family, Selfishness

“On political matters basically the best, though not infallible, source is rumor …”

Robert Conquest (1917–2015) poet and historian from England and the United States

From Grover Furr on Robert Conquest http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/08/05/grover-furr-on-robert-conquest/ at stalinsociety.org',' 2015/08/05

“These attempts to silence women and the men who support them have clearly failed. I know this because I have received so many messages of support from across the country -- women and men speaking out because they agree that contraception needs to be treated as a basic health care service.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (March 13, 2012).
Articles

Women, Men, Health, Support

“The most successful behaviour-liars are those who, instead of consciously concentrating on modifying specific signals, think themselves into the basic mood they wish to convey and then let the small details take care of themselves. This method is frequently used with great success by professional liars, such as actors and actresses. Their entire working lives are spent performing behavioural lies, a process which can sometimes be extremely damaging to their private lives. Politicians and diplomats are also required to perform an undue amount of behavioural lying, but unlike the actors they are not socially 'licensed to lie', and the resultant guilt feelings tend to interfere with their performances. Also, unlike the actors, they do not undergo prolonged training courses.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

(2000), p. 116
The Naked Ape (1967)

Lie, Feeling, Lying, Mood

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Music, Color, Mathematics, Thinking

“They are cynical about human rights. They don’t like immigrants or the European Union. They want the state to be strong and “defence”, generally, to mean attack. They are, basically, the racist grandad who is going to spoil your Christmas. These are the people pollsters have labelled “authoritarian populists.””

Paul Mason (journalist) (1960) British journalist

How do we fight the loudmouth politics of authoritarian populism? (21 November 2016)

People, Strong, Christmas

“You know, I could run for governor and all this but I'm basically a media creation. I've never really done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil industry. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”

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

In an interview with the Midland Reporter Telegram on 4 July 1989, quoted in Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (John Wiley and Sons, 2003) by James Moore and Wayne Slater, p. 161.
1980s

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Life, People, World, Travel

“A breakdown of management into its basic functions — development, production and marketing — revealed that the character of the functions, their chronological sequence, the closeness with which they had to be integrated and their relative importance to the success and survival of the business, all depended upon the system of techniques in the firm concerned.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 21-22

Business, Success, Dependency

“Throughout our history we have been challenged to armed conflict by nations which sought to destroy our independence or threatened our freedom. The young men of America have risen to those occasions, giving themselves freely to the rigors and hardships of warfare. But the stamina and strength which the defense of liberty requires are not the product of a few weeks' basic training or a month's conditioning. These only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports and interest in physical activity. Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America. Thus, in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American

Men, History, Sense, Sport

“Life is not merely persistent, as Jock puts it; life is explosive. The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to the extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life—the ragged edge of starvation.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 18, “Pioneer Party” (p. 196)

Life, Food, Mathematics

“Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that in-forms the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 21

Life, People, Memory

“Question: What is their external behaviour like?
Answer: They have few mannerisms, and they do not talk a lot; their words are simple and direct. They live modestly so that things pass through them without their involvement. They are composed in their use of the senses.
Question: Are all detached people like this?
Answer: More so or less so, depending on accidental circumstances. Essentially, however, they are the same.
Question: Do such people come to a full knowledge of the truth, or do they remain in the realm of opinion and imagining?
Answer: Since they remain basically human, they continue to have opinions and imaginings. But because they have withdrawn from themselves into that which is, they have a knowledge of all truth; for this is truth itself and they ignore themselves. But let this be enough for you. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self One does not arrive at the goal by asking questions. It is rather through detachment that one comes to this hidden truth. Amen”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

People, Truth, Imagination, Question

“While in the ﬁrst quarter of this century physicists and cosmologists were forced to revise the basic notions that govern the natural sciences, in the last quarter of this century biologists will force a revision of the basic notions that govern science itself. After that “ﬁrst revolution” it was clear that the classical concept of an “ultimate science”, that is an objective description of the world in which there are no subjects (a “subjectless universe”), contains contradictions.”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Source: 1980s, Notes on an epistemology for living things, 1981, p.258

World, Nature, Universe, Science

“The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 99

Business

“Freedom is basically a spiritual longing/ That can only be filled by a spiritual power.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Freedom: Foster It! p. 114.
Freedom: Foster it! (2004)

Freedom

“Basically, too many other people made important decisions for us and we just wrote songs and worried about clothes and girls. In the early days he came round once with this girl who had convinced him that I was just a weirdo and that we had an unhealthy relationship. He sat me down and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see so much of each other? Maybe we should knock the band on the head? It’s not really going anywhere, is it?" I was desperate for us to stick together and see it through because I never stopped believing. When we got signed, Carl was shocked. I had prepared myself and had been reading the NME since I was 16. Carl wasn’t like that.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Mail On Sunday, September 2008
Carl Barat

People, Girl, Decision, Reading

“Basically, I feel different from most other women. I feel I don’t have to put on an act. If I’m not feminine enough for someone, I don’t care, because femininity is different in everyone’s mind.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Moving Beyond Words (1994)

Women, Feeling

“For Rawls simultaneously appeals to the natural outlook of a democratic society to found his conception of the person, and to his conception of the person to found the basic structure of a democratic society. The warrant of the doctrine of two moral powers is that it ‘suits’ a society in which justice is conceived as fairness; and the warrant of justice as fairness, with its schedule of fundamental principles and primary goods, is that it ‘protects’ the exercise of the two moral powers. The attenuated idea of a person is the theoretical plinth of a desirable constitution, determining what count as primary goods ‘in advance’ of any further requirements of social life – yet is also no more than an ideological reflex of the culture it is supposed to generate. In a vicious circle, public arrangements are deduced from personal capacities defined as adapted to public arrangements.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 4. "Designing Consensus, John Rawls" (1994), p. 108

Life, Justice, Exercises, Idea

“I was recently at a meeting of analysts and vendors, and got into a conversation about Apple with one of the ex-Apple executives at the meeting. I got the sense that Tim Cook was hired because he was good at everything Jobs didn't like to do, and Phil Schiller was basically Jobs' internal fan club chairman. In other words, you really don't have a viable company without someone doing what Jobs did.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

No magic, no Apple: Cupertino's identity crisis in the fading afterglow of Jobs http://digitaltrends.com/opinion/no-magic-no-apple-cupertinos-identity-crisis-in-the-fading-afterglow-of-jobs in Digital Trends (10 August 2013)

Sense, Cooking

“Protocols:
Number 1, paras. 9,10
If every State has two foes, and if in regard to the external foe it is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense, to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?
Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments,, when any objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and when such objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of reasoning are superficial?
Graves: The basic ideas are the same despite word changes like… “two kinds of enemies” versus, “two foes.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.74

People, Hope, Art, Way

“Once we have replaced the basic premise of “more is better” with the much sounder axiom that “enough is best,” the social and technical problems of moving to a steady state become solvable, perhaps even trivial.”

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

Source: Steady-State Economics, 1977, p. 2

Problem

“Let us face the inevitable truth. There can be no Americanization from the top down or in the mass. It will not come from the court that grants a citizenship certificate; nor from the school that teaches English; nor from the speakers that talk patriotism; nor from the patriotic society that prints platitudes. It will come from basic conditions being right, and none is more vital than industrial relations. It will live as we shorten the distance between the Constitution and the shop. It will be believed in as we square every act in the shops of America with every utterance in public print.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Truth, School

“There is complete consensus on this issue. It is self-evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed … You cannot deliberately kill innocent people.”

Yousef Saanei (1937) Iranian grand ayatollah

As quoted in "Nuclear weapons unholy, Iran says" in SFGate (31 October 2003) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/31/MNGHJ2NFRE1.DTL. 2003

People, Law

“It’s too late for someone to steal this story now, I suppose. I intended Doom to return to Latvaria and absolutely freak out when he discovered what his robots had done to Kristoff. Basically—he’d need a whole lot of new robots by the time he calmed down. And then he would devote a whole lot of time and energy to restoring Kristoff.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

I had not decided if he would be successful. Part of my brain wanted him to realize he needed the help of the other smartest guy on the planet—and there was no way he could ever go there!
2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22307&PN=2&totPosts=21
Revealing his aborted plans for a character named Kristoff he created in 'Fantastic Four

Time

“Like basic distrust, manipulation as a style of relating is a deeply rooted part of the personality. It emerges from early conditioning experiences which put the primary focus on achievement, goal orientation and winning. … Some have more of that dehumanized jungle ability to manipulate than others. It cannot really be taught because it is not a question of a handful of moves but rather a constant, all-pervasive style that is always in operation.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The "Secrets" of Success, p. 43
The New Male (1979)

Question, Parting, Personality

“From experience it has been observed that a newly converted Communist frequently acquires a feeling of omniscient superiority over his unconverted fellow men. He feels that at last the universe is laid out before him in a simple, comprehensible manner. If he has never wrestled with philosophical problems before he is likely to be overwhelmed by the infatuating possibility that through Dialectical Materialism man has finally solved all of the basic problems necessary to understand the universe. In this state of mind the student will often drop his attitude of critical inquiry. He will invite indoctrination in heavy doses because of his complete assurance that he has at last discovered Truth in its ultimate form.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men, Truth, Feeling, Understanding

“Basically, I write from a two person standpoint. First, I let the song take hold and I put down the idea as a raw emotional statement. Then I let it breathe and come back, approaching from more of an objective point of view. This allows me to rediscover the true meaning I intended in the beginning, shedding new light on how I can best represent that to the listener.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Indie Journal Interview http://web.archive.org/web/20041101084648/http://www.indiejournal.com/indiejournal/interviews/bradleyjoseph.htm

Idea, Light, Personality

“If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas....(they) express something real and existing in ourselves.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

radio broadcast, together with Adolph Gottlieb, 1943
1940's

Idea

“I used to practice scales, but I think mainly in positions. I do runs that go from position to position, basically around chord shapes. I can get around pretty easily from one position to another, and on a good night it sound pretty hot. I'll take chances. Sometimes I'll trip over myself, but most times I'm lucky.”

Albert Lee

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 140, 0-679-74275-1]

Thinking, Chance, Time, Night

“All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Women, Men

“When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Roper v. Simmons

Life, Understanding

“Neither Capitalism nor Socialism can pretend to be an ideology. They are merely methods for dividing ownership and income. What is most peculiar for such theoretically practical methodologies, which are also theoretically opposed to each other, is that neither of them has ever existed, except in a highly tentative form. And even then they are invariably mixed together. Their mutually exclusive vocabularies have more to do with basic similarities than with differences.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

“In the field of education. I refer to the meaning of the word "basic," …the meaning given to this word by some educators is not its "real" meaning. The word "basic,"… has been assigned certain meanings in order to further an education philosophy which is thought to be both sensible and effective…. neither you nor I are under any obligation to accept their definition of what is "basic." …In short, the definition of something is usually the starting point of a dispute, not the settlement.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

Education

“But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book. Then of course the professor announced we would be implementing our own language, called PL/0. After thinking about it a while, we announced that we were going to do our project in BASIC. The professor looked at us like we were insane. Nobody else in the class was using BASIC. And you know what? Nobody else in the class finished their compiler either. We not only finished but added I/O extensions, and called it PL 0.5. That's rapid prototyping.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

Books, Thinking, Study

“A basic income paid for out of taxes on the market economy gives people the chance to build positions in the non-market economy. It allows them to volunteer, set up co-ops, edit Wikipedia, learn how to use 3D design software, or just exist. It allows them to space out periods of work; make a late entry or early exit from working life; switch more easily into and out of high-intensity, stressful jobs. Its fiscal cost would be high: that’s why all attempts to enact the measure separately from an overall transition project are likely to fail, despite the growing number of academic papers and global congresses dedicated to it.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

Life, People, Learning, Chance

“Just as the spinning and gathering of wool serve as the raw material for a weave, so the artist working with video selects images to serve as the basic substance of the work. All technology, in its capacity to instantly reproduce, store, and retrieve information, has moved continually in a direction that seeks to free us from laboring with our hands by giving us greater conceptual freedom to organize, select, and judge.”

Beryl Korot (1945) American artist

Source: Dachau 1974, by Beryl Korot, p. 76

Freedom

“It was developing countries where people are more cheery, wasn't it? … Well, because when people are materially disadvantaged, maybe they're more optimistic, because they know that their destiny's not entirely in their own hands. And so they just have to hope for the best. Whereas in the developed world, where materially we've got plenty of stuff, and lots of opportunities, we know that the only thing stopping us from being happy is ourselves, which of course is a kind of downward spiral into disillusionment and hopelessness, isn't it, really? Because you can't -- you're never gonna get rid of yourself, so if you're basically unhappy, you're always gonna be unhappy, and in the remaining time that you've got left, you're either gonna be in despair about the fact that you've wasted your life, or maybe a bit cheerful about the fact that it's nearly over.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, 8 January 2011

Life, Happiness, People, World

“Even a modest Basic Income program could become a stepping-stone toward the most profound transformation of all: to unlatch work from livelihood entirely.”

David Graeber book Bullshit Jobs

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018)

“I'm often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom. My mentor [Capcom senior member Akira Kitamura], who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him.”

Keiji Inafune (1965) Japanese video game designer

Source:Hirohiko Niizumi (23 September 2007). "TGS '07: Mega Man celebrates 20th anniversary" https://www.gamespot.com/articles/tgs-07-mega-man-celebrates-20th-anniversary/1100-6179759/. GameSpot. CBS Interactive Inc. Retrieved 1 February 2011.

“I want to end comments that Capcom games made in Europe aren't really Capcom games … basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love.”

Keiji Inafune (1965) Japanese video game designer

Source: "Interview with Keiji Inafune of Capcom" https://www.primagames.com/games/dead-rising-2/strategy/interview-keiji-inafune-capcom. Prima Games. Retrieved 2018-07-15.

Love, World, Game

“For me dancing is not just moving your arms and legs but basically it's a very spiritual experience. It's part of me and a second nature to me. You can say it is in my blood.”

Madhuri Dixit (1967) Indian actress

Quote, When personality comes first.....

Nature, Dance, Parting

“The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a "liquidity trap"; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.
The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, "priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

“Just as what is in the jar, when broken, becomes one with the surroundings, death offers the opportunity to recognize the basic truth of all existence through non-discriminating one-pointedness. Like space, the essence of mind is unaffected by transition and death.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Fearless Death: Buddhist Wisdom on the Art of Dying (2012)

Death, Truth

“I think the problem with the country is that we operate on a sickness model, not a wellness model… Basically, we treat people who become ill. What we don't do is do a very good job in keeping them healthy in the first place… We lose all the educational benefits, all the things we could be doing, all the things we ought to be doing, in terms of food safety… because the emphasis is on sickness. But I really don't think there's a conspiracy to make people sick so we can heal them. That I don't agree with.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Real Time with Bill Maher, October 15, 2004

People, Education, Food, Problem

“The restraints we are seeking to impose are ones which can only be opposed by a failure in empathy towards non-human animals which constitutes an irrational blindness to the fact of the basic sameness of suffering in whatever species of animal it occurs; an irrationality incompatible with clear thought about the issue.”

Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) British philosopher

Source: The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundations of Ethics, p. 95

Failure, Suffering, Animals

“Mathematics occupies a peculiar position in cultural life today. 'Everybody knows' that it is one of the most basic, and also ancient, types of knowledge; yet it is not part of normal cultural discourse, and few people know much about its historical development, or even that it has a history.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 1, page 3, 2003.

Life, People, History, Mathematics

“When we first started, they basically went John and Paul's way because they were the writers and they would say, "This is the song," and I would play as creatively as I could. Sometimes I would have three people telling me how to do it. They were saying play it this like on that track. I'm saying, "For Christ's sake, there are two drummers there." They could never hear that, you know. You'd have to have four arms to do half the stuff they wanted me to do.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Interview in Viva magazine (1978)

People, Way, Christ

“The fashionable ideology that "artificial" lacks the inherent goodness of "natural" is an appealing, but hopelessly simplistic notion of the intellectually chic. Artifice is the result of a deliberate intent to make. Nature also "makes" things, using a set of basic building blocks common throughout the universe. Exchanging infinite time for deliberate design, nature has ingeniously built plants, planets, galaxies and unimaginable constructs which seem to structure the universe itself. What we call "natural" is simply the result of whatever set of rules nature has followed in fashioning our observable reality. On planet Earth, nature has manipulated the common elements to fashion everything from bacteria to the molten core of the planet. Discoveries in the "nano" technologies of bio, molecular, and micro engineering will re-edit the nomenclature of "natural" versus "unnatural", blurring if not erasing the line of distinction between "machine" and "organism", "natural" and "unnatural", "God-given" and "man-made."”

Syd Mead (1933–2019) American concept artist

Future Concepts: The World of Syd Mead, p.15, Car Styling Magazine 088, May 1992

God, Fashion, Nature, Reality

“I think whenever you write something you want people to like it. The best way to do that, usually, is to write what you think is good. That’s basically what everyone tries to do… just to write what they think is good. Part of that is staying true to the characters and the world (which makes it a kids show by it’s design)… and part of that is introducing deeper concepts that we, as writers, are curious about exploring”

Patrick McHale (artist) (1983) writer, storyboard artist, animator, filmmaker

which makes it more interesting for adults Interview with Pat McHale (Adventure Time, Over the Garden Wall writer) https://crackplot.com/2015/06/13/interview-with-pat-mchale-adventure-time-over-the-garden-wall-writer/ (June 13, 2015)

People, World, Way, Thinking

“The basic idea of governance, as I see it, is to hold the society together so that it can develop and march towards certain goals. The task of the Government is to facilitate this evolution, this progress. It must provide proper conditions and a proper climate for this purpose. While governing, the administrator must, therefore, keep certain trends in view. He should be aware of the policies which he has to implement and of the methods which are open to him for their implementation. He should know what the Government wants and at the same time be attuned to the needs of the people.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

People, Idea, Time

“The wastage from economic conflict is so titanic under individualism that even if gross productivity should be reduced somewhat under socialization of the basic industries, the mass of people would nevertheless be better off because of the diminished conflict and resultant devastation.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

People

“Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men. And the great challenge is to move out of the mountain of practical materialism and move on to another and higher mountain which recognizes somehow that we must live by and toward the basic ends of life. We must move on to that mountain which says in substance,”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)
Context: We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture; we have allowed our technology to outdistance our theology and for this reason we find ourselves caught up with many problems. Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men. And the great challenge is to move out of the mountain of practical materialism and move on to another and higher mountain which recognizes somehow that we must live by and toward the basic ends of life. We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means — airplanes, televisions, electric lights — and lose the end: the soul?"

Life, Men, World, Mountain

“Large-scale riots in East Pakistan have compelled over two lakh Hindus and other minorities to come over to India. Indians naturally feel incensed by the happenings in East Bengal. To bring the situation under control and to prescribe the right remedy for the situation it is essential that the malady be properly diagnosed. And even in this state of mental agony, the basic values of our national life must never be forgotten. It is our firm conviction that guaranteeing the protection of the life and property of Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan is the responsibility of the Government of India. To take a nice legalistic view about the matter that Hindus in Pakistan are Pakistani nationals would be dangerous and can only result in killings and reprisals in the two countries, in greater or lesser measure. When the Government of India fails to fulfill this obligation towards the minorities in Pakistan, the people understandably become indignant. Our appeal to the people is that this indignation should be directed against the Government and should in no case be given vent to against the Indian Muslims. If the latter thing happens, it only provides the Government with a cloak to cover its own inertia and failure, and an opportunity to malign the people and repress them. So far as the Indian Muslims are concerned, it is our definite view that, like all other citizens, their life and property must be protected in all circumstances. No incident and no logic can justify any compromise with truth in this regard. A state, which cannot guarantee the right of living to its citizens, and citizens who cannot assure safety of their neighbours, would belong to the barbaric age. Freedom and security to every citizen irrespective of his faith has indeed been India’s sacred tradition. We would like to reassure every Indian Muslim in this regard and would wish this message to reach every Hindu home that it is their civic and national duty to ensure the fulfillment of this assurance.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Joint statement for the Indo-Pak confederation that D Upadhyaya signed, on 12 April 1964, with Dr Lohia, quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008)

Life, People, Truth, Age

“I'm not a big fan of asynchronicity just for its own sake - a lot of people push rhythmic variation so far that the basic pulse of the music gets lost”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

and the listener is confused
Static Line interview, 1998

People, Music

“The recognition of certain basic impossibilities has laid the foundations of some major principles of physics and chemistry; similarly, recognition of the impossibility of understanding living things in terms of physics and chemistry, far from setting limits to our understanding of life, will guide it in the right direction. And even if the demonstration of this impossibility should prove of no great advantage in the pursuit of discovery, such a demonstration would help to draw a truer image of life and man than that given us by the present basic concepts of biology.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Life's irreducible structure (1968)

Life, Understanding, Help, Drawing

“Driven by this basic profit-above-all-else directive, corporations are mandated, in effect, to “grow or die,” a rule also called “the growth imperative.” Of course, a food maker is no different from any other corporation operating in a free economy. However, food companies face special challenges when it comes to obeying the market's growth imperative: because there's a limit—in theory, anyway—to the number of calories humans can consume, competition is especially fierce among food makers for the finite pool of money that consumers can spend.”

Michele Simon (1965) public health lawyer

Source: Appetite for Profit (2006), p. 5

Money, Food

“It may also be pertinent to ask whether a greater effort in the less expensive basic stages of research may not lead to reductions of effort in the far costlier stages of development and prototype construction.”

Alan Tower Waterman (1892–1967) American physicist

in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March 1953), Vol. 9, No. 2,ISSN 0096-3402, published by Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc., p. 38.

Effort

“Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Your Thought and Mine

Law

“This very real difference between GM plants and their conventional counterparts is one of the basic truths that biotech proponents have endeavoured to obscure. As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science.
They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.
Druker describes how amazingly successful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the general public and government decision makers have been hoodwinked by the clever and methodical twisting of the facts and the propagation of many myths. Moreover, it appears that a number of respected scientific institutions, as well as many eminent scientists, were complicit in this relentless spreading of disinformation.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Senior academic condemns ‘deluded’ supporters of GM food as being ‘anti-science’ and ignoring evidence of dangers (4 March 2015) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2979645/Senior-academic-condemns-deluded-supporters-GM-food-anti-science-ignoring-evidence-dangers.html#ixzz4BZ4NnMuY Foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth (2015)

Truth, Food, Decision, Appearance

“Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells. In terms of their basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 250

“I often discuss the benefits of adopting a plant-based diet with patients who have high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, or coronary artery disease. I encourage these patients to go to the grocery store and sample different plant-based versions of many of the basic foods they eat. … Interestingly, our ACC/American Heart Association (AHA) prevention guidelines do not specifically recommend a vegan diet, as the studies are very large and observational or small and randomized, such as those on Ornish's whole food, plant-based diet intervention reversing coronary artery stenosis. The data are very compelling, but larger randomized trials are needed to pass muster with our rigorous guideline methodology. Wouldn't it be a laudable goal of the American College of Cardiology to put ourselves out of business within a generation or two? We have come a long way in prevention of cardiovascular disease, but we still have a long way to go. Improving our lifestyles with improved diet and exercise will help us get there.”

Kim A. Williams (1955) American cardiologist

"CardioBuzz: Vegan Diet, Healthy Heart?" https://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Prevention/46860, MedPage Today (July 21, 2014).

Disease, Food, Way, Exercises

“Knowledge of the components of the atom and of the forces that hold them together stimulated entirely new fields of basic science and technology that continue to the present.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

Knowledge, Science