Quotes about course
page 18

“Our understanding of the four basic concepts of Physics -- space, time, matter and force -- has undergone radical change in the course of work on unification, starting with Maxwell's unification of electricity with magnetism, all the way to present day string theory. What started as four independent concepts, with space and time postulated and the possible forms of matter and force arbitrarily chosen, now appear as different aspects of a rich and novel dynamically determined structure.”

Peter Freund (1936–2018) American physicist

Physics and Geometry, a paper written for the Symposium on Theoretical Physics at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland on August 28, 2003 and at the Freydoon Mansouri Memorial Session of the 3rd International Symposium on Quantum Theory and Symmetries at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, on September 13, 2003. Report #EFI03-47.

Anton Chekhov photo
Chuck Jones photo
Aron Ra photo

“I was born in the richest, most technologically advanced (and consequently the most powerful) country in the world. We were the leaders in science, so of course we had a better economy, and we had a higher standard of living than anyone else at that time. The rest of the globe sent their best and brightest to enroll in our schools because our students were among the most inventive, innovative and involved. Some of the greatest American scientists were the immigrants who stayed and enabled the United States to achieve more than anyone else had in the history of mankind. That's when our secular government still cared about better education. Sadly, that is not the country I still live in. America was number one, but saying that now reminds me of Aesop's fable where the hare is still resting on its laurels long after the tortoise has passed. In the fifty years since I was born, America's rating in science has fallen from number one to number thirty-seven. We have one of the lowest science scores of all countries in the developed world (or first world). Foreign scholars and foreign scientists don't stay here long after graduation (if they come at all), because what sort of environment do we offer intellectuals now? Our own scientists, our own graduate scholars are leaving as well, moving to Europe or Asia where they're more welcome, although an American going abroad now means that he will have to try to live down new stereotype instead of living up to the old one.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Daniel Dennett photo
Mr. T photo

“Do you know me? Of course you do. 'Cause I'm famous!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool (1984)

Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Anthony Watts photo

“Of course we all know that the human race has historically done better during warm periods. While we've seen a slight warming in the last century, we've also seen a worldwide improvement in the human condition. Warm – what's not to like?”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

The Deadliest U.S. Natural Hazard: Extreme Cold http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/18/the-deadliest-us-natural-hazard-extreme-cold/ December 18, 2008.
Other

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“It is now my opinion that in all Indian curricula of higher education there should be a place for Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, besides of course the vernacular.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

Ken Ham photo
Kunti photo

“Kunti and Draupadi are two women who shape the entire course of dynastic destiny in the Mahabharata. Kunti chooses the scion of Hastinapura, Pandu, to wed, and becomes the mother of the epic’s protagonists: the Pandavas.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

Farhad Manjoo photo

“[W]hile Apple has slowed its design cadence, its rivals have sped up. … Over the course of a few months, Samsung put out several design refinements, culminating in the Note 7, a big phone that has been universally praised by critics.”

Farhad Manjoo (1978) American journalist

What's Really Missing From the New iPhone: Cutting-Edge Design http://nytimes.com/2016/09/08/technology/whats-really-missing-from-the-new-iphone-dazzle.html in The New York Times (7 September 2016)

Robert Sheckley photo
Fernando J. Corbató photo
Isa Genzken photo
Karen Kwiatkowski photo

“It's easy, of course, for two teams to collude, but somewhat more difficult for twenty-eight”

Howard Raiffa (1924–2016) American academic

Part II, Chapter 7, Acquisitions and Mergers, p. 107. (See also: European Union).
The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982)

Walter Scott photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Nur Muhammad Taraki photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Robert Oppenheimer photo

“Well — yes. In modern times, of course.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Answer to a student at Rochester University who asked whether the bomb exploded at Alamogordo was the first one to be detonated, as quoted in Doomsday, 1999 A.D. (1982) by Charles Berlitz, p. 129

Samuel R. Delany photo
Ann Coulter photo
Jarvis Cocker photo

“I used to look at older people who bothered to still attend nightclubs and couldn’t help but wonder why. Didn’t they realize how foolish they looked? Of course, now that I’m one of those people myself, I have decided that such rules don’t apply to me.”

Jarvis Cocker (1963) English musician, singer-songwriter, radio presenter and editor

Interview with The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jarvis-cocker-gordon-brown-is-crushingly-dull-id-advocate-a-revolution-1680098.html (2009)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
John Paul Jones photo
Richard Dawkins photo
William McKinley photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Jane Roberts photo
Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“Globalization is a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Pillars of Globalization, p. 13 (2006)

Rudyard Kipling photo
Randy Pausch photo
Ada Leverson photo
John Hicks photo
Steve Lyons photo
Antonio Negri photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“To lie, of course, is to engender insanity.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

August 1932 Henry and June
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Alan Bennett photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Norman Angell photo
Subh-i-Azal photo
David Berg photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

Fritz Leiber photo
Branch Rickey photo
Pat Condell photo

“But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?…Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God is not enough" (23 May 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=1czXvHSjDac&feature=related)
2008

Pietro Metastasio photo

“What will the stream become in its lengthened course, if it be so turbid at its source?”

Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) Italian poet and librettist (born 3 January 1698, died 12 April 1782)

Qual diverrà quel fiume,
Nel lungo suo cammino,
Se al fonte ancor vicino
É torbido così?
Part I.
Morte d' Abele (1732)

Paul Graham photo

“Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"Mean People Fail", November 2014

Gore Vidal photo
Charles Dickens photo

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Norman Angell photo
William Cullen Bryant photo

“These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Crowded Street http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page253, st. 10 (1864)

Pierce Brosnan photo
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

14 April 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

William Osler photo

“My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

Vol. I, Ch. 24 : "The Fixed Period".
The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Moby photo

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Auguste Rodin photo
Susan Cooper photo
John Bright photo
Nicole Richie photo
Aneurin Bevan photo
Plutarch photo
Sylvia Plath photo
John Eardley Wilmot photo
Richard von Mises photo

“The mean and variance are unambiguously determined by the distribution, but a distribution is, of course, not determined by its mean and variance: A number of different distributions have the same mean and the same variance.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

Sixth Lecture, Statistical Problems in Physics, p. 212
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

William Burges photo

“Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Quote was introduced with the phrase:
In the lecture on the weaver's art, we are reminded of the superiority of Indian muslins and Chinese and Persian carpets, and the gorgeous costumes of the middle ages are contrasted with our own dark ungraceful garments. The Cufic inscriptions that have so perplexed antiquaries, were introduced with the rich Eastern stuffs so much sought after by the wealthy class, and though, as Mr. Burges observes
Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 85; Cited in: " Belles Lettres http://books.google.com/books?id=0EegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143" in: The Westminster Review, Vol. 84-85. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1865. p. 143

Robert Southwell photo

“Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Times Go by Turns, Line 5; p. 47.

Seneca the Younger photo

“It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.”
Satius est supervacua scire quam nihil.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXVIII: On liberal and vocational studies, Line 45.

Pat Condell photo

“Sharia … is, of course, invalid because it's God's Law, and God doesn't exist.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Wake up, America" (22 October 2009) https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjSjpNe1-Vc
2009

Nguyen Khanh photo

“I an a political asylum situation here. Legally, I cannot tell that I am making any politics action here. But I always want to be with my people over there. I want to go back to Vietnam, of course, if possible.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Political resentment in contemporary Vietnam
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

Guity Novin photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Mao Zedong photo

“A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel -- an unwillingness to share weal and woe with the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to streamline our organizations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practice economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work. We must see to it that all our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a large socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that this is a very big contradiction. To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在我们的许多工作人员中间,现在滋长着一种不愿意和群众同甘苦,喜欢计较个人名利的危险倾向,这是很不好的。我们在增产节约运动中要求精简机关,下放干部,使相当大的一批干部回到生产中去,就是克服这种危险倾向的一个方法。要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国,但又是一个经济落后的穷国,这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来,需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间,其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

Joni Madraiwiwi photo

“Remember that the actions of a few, with commitment, can alter the course of world history.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Address to Greenpeace, Suva, 10 July 2005.

Aldous Huxley photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“Time may restore us in his course
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

St. 6
Memorial Verses (1852)

John Tyler photo

“If the tide of defamation and abuse shall turn, and my administration come to be praised, future Vice-Presidents who may succeed to the Presidency may feel some slight encouragement to pursue an independent course.”

John Tyler (1790–1862) American politician, 10th President of the United States (in office from 1841 to 1845)

Letter to Robert Tyler (12 March 1848).

Natacha Rambova photo
Djuna Barnes photo

“Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

In a 1960 letter to Natalie Barney, as quoted in Paris Was a Woman (1995) by Andrea Weiss, p. 173 http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/brandelmcdaniel/index/library.htm

Mark Tobey photo
George Biddell Airy photo