Quotes about course (4346 quotes, page 20)

“Of course we know that an untroubled state of mind cannot last. So we say that inspiration comes and goes but really it is there all the time waiting for us to be untroubled again. We can therefore say that it is pervasive. Young children are more untroubled than adults and have many more inspirations.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Source: 1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1972, p. 62

Children , Time , Waiting

“Present-day computers are designed primarily to solve preformulated problems or to process data according to predetermined procedures. The course of the computation may be conditional upon results obtained during the computation, but all the alternatives must be foreseen in advance. … The requirement for preformulation or predetermination is sometimes no great disadvantage. It is often said that programming for a computing machine forces one to think clearly, that it disciplines the thought process. If the user can think his problem through in advance, symbiotic association with a computing machine is not necessary.
However, many problems that can be thought through in advance are very difficult to think through in advance. They would be easier to solve, and they could be solved faster, through an intuitively guided trial-and-error procedure in which the computer cooperated, turning up flaws in the reasoning or revealing unexpected turns in the solution. Other problems simply cannot be formulated without computing-machine aid. … One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems.
The other main aim is closely related. It is to bring computing machines effectively into processes of thinking that must go on in "real time," time that moves too fast to permit using computers in conventional ways. Imagine trying, for example, to direct a battle with the aid of a computer on such a schedule as this. You formulate your problem today. Tomorrow you spend with a programmer. Next week the computer devotes 5 minutes to assembling your program and 47 seconds to calculating the answer to your problem. You get a sheet of paper 20 feet long, full of numbers that, instead of providing a final solution, only suggest a tactic that should be explored by simulation. Obviously, the battle would be over before the second step in its planning was begun. To think in interaction with a computer in the same way that you think with a colleague whose competence supplements your own will require much tighter coupling between man and machine than is suggested by the example and than is possible today.”

J. C. R. Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis

Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Way , Error , Imagination , Problem

“The lack of freedom suffered by those who advise the powerful may of course be due to coercion or force. But the slavish behavior typical of such counselors may equally well be due to their basic condition of dependence and their understanding of what their clientage demands of them. As soon as they begin to ‘slide into a blind dependence upon one who has wealth and power’, they begin to desire ‘only to know his will’, and eventually ‘care not what injustice they do, if they may be rewarded’.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

(describing the view of Algernon Sidney) p. 93
Liberty Before Liberalism (1998)

Behavior , Understanding , Freedom , Suffering

“Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings. (With 8.0 they're rethinking that. Of course, Perl rethought that from the start.)”

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

Usenet postings, 1997

“Still, slavery professes only to wish its rights. It only wants to be let alone. Of course, what else could it want? And what else is the secret of the present state of the country? Under the plea of being let alone — that it was a dreadful thing and only wanted to mind its own business — it has quietly possessed itself, one after another, of all the outworks of the Constitution, and now seeks to intrench itself finally in the citadel.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Secret , Business , Country

“Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

The Chasm: The Future Is Calling (Part One) (2003–2009)

Money , People , Selfishness , Wealth

“Expressed egotism is, of course, no reason necessarily to disregard someone’s work, but it is a warning signal. If someone can evaluate his work so poorly, is the work itself likely to be better? In many of his areas of intellectual interest, Popper’s work is wanting.
Hayek did more to advance Popper professionally early in his career than anyone else, and Popper remembered his personal debt to Hayek. Over the years, he wrote him a number of appreciative letters.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Personality

“Even as the light that shifts and plays upon a lake, when Cynthia looks forth from heaven or the bright wheel of Phoebus in mid course passes by, so doth he shed a gleam upon the waters; he heeds not the shadow of the Nymph or her hair or the sound of her as she rises to embrace him. Greedily casting her arms about him, as he calls, alack! too late for help and utters the name of his mighty friend, she draws him down; for her strength is aided by his falling weight.”
Stagna vaga sic luce micant ubi Cynthia caelo prospicit aut medii transit rota candida Phoebi, tale iubar diffundit aquis: nil umbra comaeque turbavitque sonus surgentis ad oscula nymphae. illa avidas iniecta manus heu sera cientem auxilia et magni referentem nomen amici detrahit, adiutae prono nam pondere vires.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 558–564

Light , Water , Help , Drawing

“It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans…. This is, of course, a very short list and could be easily expanded. But whether the number of prominent Hindus killed by fanatic Muslims is large or small matters little. What matters is the attitude of those who count towards these murderers. The murderers paid the penalty of law where law is enforced. The leading Moslems, however, never condemned theses criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration of this attitude, one may refer to Mr. Barkat Ali, a Barrister of Lahore, who argued the appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by the law of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr. Gandhi.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 157

Law , Penalty , Understanding , Parting

“His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Arguing against seeking the death penalty for the anarchist who had attempted to assassinate him on 19 February 1919, shooting at him seven times and hitting him only once in the chest, as quoted in A Time for Angels : The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations (1975) by Elmer Bendine, p. 106
Prime Minister

War , History , Time , Training

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

People , Education , Study , Freedom

“Yoga powers.
To make oneself invisible or small.
To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things.
To change the course of nature.
To place oneself anywhere in space or time.
To summon the dead.
To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds,
in one's deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision

World , Nature , Sense , Change

“The next picture is a Goliath with four arms, reading a book, lofting a 1000-pound dumbbell, aiming a pistol at a target, painting a picture. The enemy can do everything. "He's a giant, seven feet tall with four arms, each with two biceps. Each arm can, of course, be used simultaneously."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

pg: 11-12
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: the intuitive science of thermonuclear war.

Books , Reading , Painting

“I've always ranked the Brahms as the Mount Everest of all concertos -- and the Beethoven, of course.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

NEWSWEEK 1999 http://www.jeremycaplan.com/SarahChangInterview.htm, Interview with Barnes & Noble.com June 2003 http://music.barnesandnoble.com/features/interview.asp?NID=706502&z=y

“The last two years show that what Enoch [Powell] says today Edward [Heath] will be proclaiming as Tory policy anything from three to six months later…Selsdon Man is not just a lurch to the right, it is an atavistic desire to reverse the course of twenty-five years of social revolution. What they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality…The message to the British people would be simple and brutal. It would say, "You're out on your own."”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Nottingham (6 February 1970), quoted in The Times (7 February 1970), p. 1 and Philip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), p. 40
Prime Minister

People

“Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. … I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Interview with Karachi Ummat (28 September 2001).
2000s, 2001

Women , Children , People , Knowledge

“I think so many of the objects we're surrounded by seem trivial. And I think that's because they're either trying to make a statement or trying to be overtly different. What we were trying to do was have a very honest approach and an exploration of materials and surface treatment. So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think "of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?"”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.
In an interview in Icon Magazine (July 2003)

Way , Thinking , Sense

“Although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such “brilliant” successes as at time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real people's" revolution, since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Ch. 3 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch03.htm
(1917)

People , Way , Time , Success

“The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over what one columnist called the “cooling of America.” But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"Yes, the System Is Rigged" http://buchanan.org/blog/yes-system-rigged-125529 (August 11, 2016), Patrick J. Buchanan
2010s

War , Time

“Imagine that we didn't know the chimpanzee, that all we knew were those bonobos who have sex all the time and are peaceful and female-dominated and that people would say that this is our only close relative. I think we would have totally different theories about ourselves and our background. But, of course, it didn't happen that way.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)

People , Peace , Sex , Way

“I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Life , School , Girl , Learning

“As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men — and of women — are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

These are the ascetics.
Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Life , Women , Men , Effort

“I trust that I have now made amends for any ambiguity, or want of fulness, in my previous exposition of that which I hold to be the essence of the Agnostic doctrine. Henceforward, I might hope to hear no more of the assertion that we are necessarily Materialists, Idealists, Atheists, Theists, or any other ists, if experience had led me to think that the proved falsity of a statement was any guarantee against its repetition. And those who appreciate the nature of our position will see, at once, that when Ecclesiasticism declares that we ought to believe this, that, and the other, and are very wicked if we don't, it is impossible for us to give any answer but this: We have not the slightest objection to believe anything you like, if you will give us good grounds for belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality and insure our own damnation several times over. We are quite content to leave that to the decision of the future. The course of the past has impressed us with the firm conviction that no good ever comes of falsehood, and we feel warranted in refusing even to experiment in that direction.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Agnosticism and Christianity" (1899) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Agn-X.html
1890s

Hope , Feeling , Nature , Thinking

“The facts drawn from an experience of more than twenty years enable us to make certain deductions with respect to the study of the Negro. Only one Negro out of every ten thousand is interested in the effort to set forth what his race has thought and felt and attempted and accomplished that it may not become a negligible factor in the thought of the world. By traditions and education, however, the large majority of Negroes have become interested in the history and status of other races, and they spend millions annually to promote such knowledge. Along with this sum, of course, should be considered the large amount paid for devices in trying not to be Negroes.”

Carter G. Woodson book The Mis-Education of the Negro

Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), Chapter XVIII: The Study of the Negro

World , Education , History , Knowledge

“Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them — provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others — whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

(with Rylla Cathryn Smith) What Libertarians Believe, "Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle500-20090104-02.html 4 January 2009.

Life , People

“The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, in anguish, nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some), but I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's an innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectal propaganda and Comintern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar, assumes that the truth-teller is lying too.”

Jack Kerouac book Vanity of Duluoz

Vanity of Duluoz (1968)

Truth , Lie , World , Lying

“The "meaning" in the title of the book acknowledges the close and familiar connection between intentionality and meaning. The connection holds between the meaning of the sentence Smith utters when he utters "Bigmouth has struck again" and his belief that Bigmouth has struck again. The idea of this close relation is not intended to convey the obvious falsehood that the meanings of the sentences which an agent utters always express the contents of his beliefs. Utterances which are lies or metaphors, for instance, spoil the generality of that relation. Rather, the relation is conveyed by the fact that a sincere, non-self-deceived, utterance of (or assent to) a sentence by an agent is an utterance of something whose literal meaning gives the content of the belief that is expressed by that utterance. The fact that sentences are often not uttered this way does not spoil the connection between belief and meaning, though it obviously makes it necessary to produce an appropriately nuanced formulation of the connection for those utterances. The underlying effect of acknowledging the connection, of course, is to make the study of an agent's mind integral to the study of his meanings, and vice versa.”

Akeel Bilgrami (1950) Indian philosopher

Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World

Books , Way , Idea , Study

“When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of “popular” writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as “conjecture and refutation.””

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"An Essay on a Pig Roast", p. 437
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Truth , Disappointment , Error , Literature

“The excursus upon the origin of Odysseus’ scar is not basically different from the many passages in which a newly introduced character, or even a newly appearing object or implement, though it be in the thick of a battle, is described as to its nature and origin; or in which, upon the appearance of a god, we are told where he last was, what he was doing there, and by what road he reached the scene; indeed, even the Homeric epithets seem to me in the final analysis to be traceable to the same need for an externalization of phenomena in terms perceptible to the senses. Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood. … To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly: Polyphemus talks to Odysseus; Odysseus talks to the suitors when he begins to kill them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after; and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 5

God , Feeling , Nature , Sense

“Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 4.

God , Way , Business , Nature

“The purpose of art is expression. Of course this short sentence raises many questions. By itself it is uninformative. One should specify what art can and cannot express. One should specify what art should and should not express. These questions cannot be answered without having some notion of the nature of man. Here it is presupposed that God created man as essentially a rational being. This implies that man’s most valuable expressions are rational and intellectual. Therefore, although man can express emotion, by screaming “Ouch,” art becomes more human and valuable in proportion to its intellectual content. This does not deny that excellent technique may express triviality, evil, and insanity. It asserts, however, that what should be expressed is rational and intelligent.”

Gordon H. Clark (1902–1985) American philosopher and Calvinist theologian

“Christian Aesthetics,” The Trinity Review, May 1989.

God , Art , Intelligence , Question

“This is all strictly against regulations, of course, and Marie-Claude should never have asked you in. And naturally, I should have turned you out the second I knew you were here. But Marie-Claude doesn't care much for their regulations these days, and I must say, neither do I.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 22, p. 259

Nature

“The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Nature , Knowledge , Study , Silence

“He was referring, of course, to the gentleman employed by Henry Luce and you will note, at once, the slightly unpleasant and combative tone of the salesman but there is also so much glee contained in it, an anticipation of the joys of a difficult battle, that even a person of fine scruples, sensitive to the vulgarity of the salesman type (such as yourself, Professor) need not be offended but rather challenged by the contradiction contained herein, i. e. that this crass aggression can co-exist with an ability to draw very fine moral distinctions and to see, very objectively, the damage his father's business was doing to the fauna of the country he loved and that, further - like real estate for instance - it was one of those great Australian enterprises that generate wealth while making nothing new.”

Peter Carey book Illywhacker

Page 561.
Illywhacker (1985)

Love , Business , Joy , Drawing

“Macroevolution is properly defined as the emergence of new taxa at or above the species level. The only time creationists will use the proper definition is when they are as-yet unaware of the fact that speciation has already been directly-observed and documented dozens of times –both in the lab and in naturally-controlled conditions in the field. In fact, we’ve seen it so many times we’ve had to categorize recurrent types of macroevolution we’ve seen so often repeated. Once creationists find out about all this, their first reaction is to use the excuse that some newly evolved species of fruit fly or fish somehow still doesn’t count because it’s “still” a fly or it’s “still” a fish. Well of course it is! Evolution couldn’t permit them to be anything else. Creationists demand that the new species be so different from their parents that one can’t even tell they’re related. The irony there is that evolutionary theory never suggests that one “kind” of thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different “kind” of anything, not unless you ignore all the intermediate stages –which of course creationists do.”

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

"11th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm277H3ot6Y, Youtube (June 26, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Nature , Parent , Fish , Time

“If all the theories pertinent to systems engineering could be discussed within a common framework by means of a standard set of nomenclature and definitions, many separate courses might not be required.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Theory of Systems Engineering (1967), p. vi; cited in: Jack Murph Pollin (1969) Theoretical Foundations for Analysis of Teleological Systems. p. 63.

“Actually, one of the real problems that always bothers me [in creating a painting] is sustaining a feeling. I mean, when I look at Poussin now, well, I think that's the most incredible thing to maintain the feeling for a year, however long it took Poussin, I'm telling you, to paint this vast structure. Bur perhaps that is not given to us now. I don't know…. Actually all all modern art puzzles me. I don't understand it. II really don't. I don't know whether it is fragmentary [as David Sylvester the interviewer suggested]. I have a sickening nostalgia for this other state of sustaining a feeling for months, being able to construct and build a picture. Well Mondrian, I think, did that, of course. He was almost one of the last artists to do that. I wish I could get there.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 91-92

Art , Feeling , Understanding , Problem

“Yet scientists are required to back up their claims not with private feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must have rigorous controls to eliminate spurious effects. And statistical analysis eliminates the suspicion (or at least measures the likelihood) that the apparent effect might have happened by chance alone.Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the £740,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe. Why don't the television editors insist on some equivalently rigorous test? Could it be that they believe the alleged paranormal powers would evaporate and bang go the ratings?Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans. The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.”

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

[Human gullibility beyond belief,— the “paranormal” in the media, The Sunday Times, 1996-08-25]

Truth , Secret , Feeling , Decision

“All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her sexuality, p. 309
Autobiography

Love , Sex , Disappointment , Feeling

“Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's "hidden hand" than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 30, 1962, page 133.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Freedom

“I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

1860s, Farewell address (1865)

Law

“Of course there is much criticism of the court by this group or that, depending on the court's decisions in various highly publicized cases. Some of the criticism is profoundly uninformed and unhelpful. And all too often, uncivil second-guessing is not encumbered by the constraints of facts, logic or reasoned analysis.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Decision , Dependency

“I could trace own EST brainwave to a flight back from a trip to Japan. But, of course, great ideas are often simultaneously conceived by several people who have responded in a similar way to the climate of thinking, and it can be hard to pin down when and precisely how a flash of inspiration is born. Kaplan had taught me that good ideas are a dime of dozen for a smart person, and the only thing that distinguishes good from great is in how an idea is executed—how it becomes reality. Scientific history is littered with stories of one person having an idea but not following through on it only to see another have a similar inspiration and then prove it to be valid.”

Craig Venter (1946) American biochemist

A Life Decoded by Craig Venter, p. 129 http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Life_Decoded.html?id=jx9JsHry1PgC&pg=PA129

People , Way , History , Idea

“Education is a set of analogies to a genuinely human existence, of which the arts are the model. Merely human life is of course a demonic analogy or parody of genuinely human life.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 149

Life , Education , Art

“I tried to tell which was Randall, but I could not; in their gowns and masks, they all looked the same, impersonal, interchangeable. That was not true of course. One of those four men had responsibility for everything, for the contact of all sixteen workers present. And responsibility for the seventeenth person in that room, the man whose heart was stopped.”

Michael Crichton book A Case of Need

A Case of Need (1968)

Men , Heart , Personality

“Course, that doesn't work when 'a' contains parentheses.”

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

[199710211647.JAA17957@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

Page 227.
Stepping Westward (1965)

Universe

“I yield to authority. I think the practice of the Court of Chancery for more than one hundred years, and the authority of Judges of very great eminence, establish such a course of practice and such a chain of authority, that I do not think I am at liberty to assume that either the Court or those very learned Judges were in error as to their powers and jurisdiction.”

Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury (1823–1921) British politician

Attorney-General v. Marquess of Ailesbury (1887), L. J. (N. S.) 57 Q. B. 89.

Error , Thinking , Learning

“The champions of militant Islam are, of course, misogynists, woman-haters; they are also misologists — haters of reason. Their armed doctrine is little more than a chaotic penal code underscored by impotent dreams of genocide. And, like all religions, it is a massive agglutination of stock response, of cliches, of inherited and unexamined formulations.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)

Religion , Dreams

“I believe synthetic biology forces society into the chaos of ethics. And, I believe that every connotation of "chaos" applies to the ethics of synthetic biology. Researchers must decide if a particular endeavor is ethical because, of course, mistakes can result due to the unpredictability of these very complex systems. I also believe that the original Greek and the Genesis, Chapter 1, understanding of formlessness applies, since scientists are trying to move to the simplest creatures possible, so-called "chassis bacteria", onto which they can add desirable traits at their choosing. Finally, I believe that the mathematical connotation of chaos applies, since even the most simple living creature is a dynamical system that is highly sensitive to initial conditions. I sometimes wonder about the extent to which those most intimately involved and those strongly advocating synthetic biology think about this.”

Daniel Alan Vallero (1953) American scientist

Class notes from Vallero's optimization course at Duke University. 2017.

Mathematics , Understanding , Thinking

“I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Art , Home , Nature , Universe

“[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Spicer (1997) explains: "Boulding (1989) referred to three independent systems from which power is exercised in our society: threat, production and exchange, and integrative. The threat system is one in which power is accomplished through coercion in its many guises, often including asymmetrical one-way persuasive communication exchanges. The production and exchange system speaks to the economic system, of which public relations is certainly a part. And, finally, the integrative system.
Source: 1980s, Three Faces of Power, 1989, p. 670-671 as cited in: Christopher Spicer (1997) Organizational Public Relations: A Political Perspective. p. 248

Love , Friendship , Communication

“There has never been a freedom, of course, that someone has not proved ingenious enough to abuse.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

Freedom

“What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:
"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

Age , Law

“Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

Foreword by S. N. Balagangadhara in "Invading the Sacred" (2007)
Source: Balagangadhara, S.N. (2007), "Foreword." In Ramaswamy, de Nicolas & Banerjee (Eds.), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Delhi: Rupa & Co., pp. vii–xi.

Women , Pain , World , School

“The first living organisms on Earth doubtless arose in an aqueous environment, and the course of evolution has been shaped by the proper ties of the aqueous medium in which life began.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 2 : Water

Life

“One of the great tests of a band, of course, was its manner of playing "God Save the King." … The English did it with effortless superiority, as though to say "We have frequently played this air in the presence of the King-Emperor and have reason to believe that he was perfectly satisfied." The American band gave an impression that every man was treacherously muttering the words of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" into his instrument; which was, of course, intolerable. I have probably misjudged this band, for like most children I was a patriotic bigot.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

I Remember Creatore (1948) Reminiscences on Giuseppe Creatore and his band http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=%40attr+1%3D1016+&query=Creatore

God , Children , Country

“It is my view and hope that Israel will have our continued support. I wish it every success. Of course, what Israel regards as success is up to it to decide. But for friends like me, "success" means a secure Israel at peace with neighbors who recognize and respect its existence. Even so, we should maintain our special relationship and help Israel keep its qualitative military edge.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Peace , Hope , Support , Success

“It makes me ashamed as a man, as a citizen, as a Christian, to see the prejudice that is acted against the colored citizens of America because of his colour. As to the substance, the colored man is equal to the white man; he has a like intellect, the same blood courses in their veins; they are both equally the children of a common Father, who is in heaven.”

John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop

Sermon at St. Augustine Catholic Church (1890)

Children , Color

“[In 1932, Lionel Robbins declared economics ‘the science of choice’ (Robbins 1932). In the same year, when students at the University of Chicago opened their social sciences course reader, they read Knight’s response:] Such definitions come too near to saying that economics is the science of things generally, of everything that men are for practical reasons interested in. Such a definition is useless and misleading”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: The Economic Organization, 1951, p. 4 as cited in: Ross B. Emmett (ed). The Elgar Companion to The Chicago School of Economics http://books.google.com/books?id=MaCciKWcDIAC&pg=PA54, 2008. p. 53

Men , Universe , Science , Reading

“Women began their inner emancipation by their access to literature, by access to the world through books; an access they could not have socially or politically, or of course economically, in the world at large.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 19
Do Books Matter?

Women , Books , World , Literature

“I typically find myself wanting to verify every single fact or idea that I hadn't heard of before, and say either "hold on, I need to think about that for a few minutes" or "let me check that on Google/Wikipedia". In actual conversation I'd suppress this because I suspect the other person will quickly find it extremely annoying. I just think to myself "I'll try to remember what he's saying and check it out later", but of course I don't have such a good memory.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d9CcQ24ukbL8WcMpB/how-to-always-have-interesting-conversations#HK9pw3RnReS5x9bPa on LessWrong, June 2010

Idea , Thinking , Memory , Personality

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as…”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Love , Death , Friendship , Art

“I'm also lumbered with the title of being a writer's writer, which is the worst possible reputation you can have, because, of course, other writers don't read other writers except to gain evidence against them. And it puts readers off.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

Reading

“What has occurred over the course of the last few centuries is a growing (but by no means universal or certain) recognition that science gets the job done, while religion makes excuses. Sometimes they are very pretty excuses that capture the imagination of the public, but ultimately, when you want to win a war or heal a dying child or get rich from a discovery or explore Antarctica, you turn to science and reason, or you fail.”

PZ Myers (1957) American scientist and associate professor of biology

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/12/saving-gods-by-making-them-eve/
Saving gods by making them even emptier of meaning
Pharyngula
2009-09-12

War , Religion , Imagination , Universe

“The battle between Good and Evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between Good and Evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and… they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this became cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

"GRRM Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History", interview with TIME Entertainment http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/ (18 April 2011)

People , Thinking , Decision , Evil

“Democracy has failed to dampen the right/left ideological schism, which is historically rooted in the early years of separate state creation. And neither the right nor the left is fully able to provide a convincing alternative vision of how democracy in Korean society can robustly develop and thereby enhance its quality. The rightists/conservatives, who continue to retain their predominant power and influence over the state and civil society, still cling to an old-fashioned, outmoded black-and-white ideology derived from the Cold War period. That ideology can no longer provide a political vision and values and norms pertinent to the post-Cold War era as well as a democratized, highly modernized and globalized social environment. Thereby they have failed to play a leading role in enhancing autonomy of civil society vis-à-vis the state, respecting rule of law, and contributing to bringing social integration and inclusiveness.
On the other hand, the leftists have disappointed many people who expected that the entirely new generations which appeared on the political center stage in the course of democratization could play a decisive role in changing Korean politics. In recent years we have witnessed a growing disillusionment with the radical discourses and ideas as well as with their inability to develop a new type of party politics, deal with the socio-economic problems and provide a certain substantive model for ethical life.”

Choi Jang-jip (1943) South Korean political scientist

"The Fragility of Liberalism and its Political Consequences in Democratized Korea" (2009)

Life , War , People , Law

“You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things.'.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

People , Stupidity , Smile , Business

“Noory: [Referring to the Sago Mine disaster] Of course, this is after the fact, with the 12 or 13 coal miners they found successfully.
Browne: I know.
Noory: Had you been on the program today, and had they not been found, would you have felt as if, because they had heard no sounds, that this was a very gloomy moment, and they might have all died?
Browne: No, I knew they were going to be found. Uh, you know, I hate people who say something after the fact. It's just like I knew when the Pope was dead and I said it on, thank God I was on Montel's show, and I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was, and I said he's gone, and he was.”

Sylvia Browne (1936–2013) American author

January 3, 2006, on the U.S. radio program Coast to Coast AM with George Noory
Ultimately incorrect: the miners were found dead. January 8, 2006 Fox News Interview http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180681,00.html

God , Hate , People , Time

“You [the interviewer Edouard Roditi, in 1958] have probably understood that I had always been mainly a plain-air painter, though I also painted portraits and still-life compositions. At first I experienced great difficulty with my brushwork – I mean with that the French call 'la touche de pinceau'. So Kandinsky taught me how to achieve the effects that I wanted with a palette knife. In the view from my window in Sèvres, that I painted in 1906, when we were together in France, you can see how well he taught me. Later of course, here in Murnau, I learned to handle brushes, too, but I managed this by following Kandinsky's example, first with a palette knife, than with brushes.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 120

Life , Learning , Painting

“Cooper: Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes for years?
Trump: Of course I do. Of course I do. And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors. … I pay tremendous numbers of taxes. I absolutely used it. And so did Warren Buffett and so did George Soros and so did many of the other people that Hillary is getting money from.”

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

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

Money , People , Loss , Personality

“Churchill, he is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 323.
Other

Communication

“I guess there's some sort of unspoken show business rule, [speaks in British accent] 'You do the theater, and then you move into television, and then, of course, that is your steppingstone to film stardom.' I've done it every which way. I've done theater for many, many years and then had some success in films. I would do television sporadically. I thought this was a good time to try it.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

On his role in the television series Encore! Encore! — reported in Susan King, Los Angeles Times (October 27, 1998) "In Sitcom, Nathan Lane Isn't Taking Steppingstones In Order", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. D6.

Way , Business , Time , Success

“His most celebrated poems are, of course, the historical-satirical ballads (A or even X certificate) in which a person or period is "hit off", in the sense both of being preserved and hit for six.”

William Plomer (1903–1973) South African-British writer

Philip Larkin, in The Guardian, June 10, 1960.
Criticism

Sense , Personality

“Of course, like all young men, I tried to be as unhappy as I could — a kind of Hamlet and Raskolnikov rolled into one.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

Men

“Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Vegan computer geeks for Dean
2003-12-10
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2003/12/11/vegan_computer_geeks_for_dean/page/full/
2003

Food

“What would I do if Alex wasn't around? I would have no one to keep me on my toes or to fight. So of course I am pleased he changed his mind. I enjoy our rivalry. It is good for Arsenal, good for Manchester United and good for both of us.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

In response to Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement u-turn, (February 2002) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20020210/ai_n12837467/

Change , Fight

“The recurrence of certain themes in movies suggests that each generation wants romance restated in slightly new terms, and of course it’s one of the pleasures of movies as a popular art that they can answer this need. And yet, and yet — one doesn’t expect an educated generation to be so soft on itself, much softer than the factory workers of the past who didn’t go back over and over to the same movies, mooning away in fixation on themselves and thinking this fixation meant movies had suddenly become an art, and their art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Pleasure , Education , Art , Thinking

“Well, he wrote a book -- well, maybe here I'm being political -- he wrote a book about the tyrants of South America, and then he had several stanzas against the United States. Now he knows that that's rubbish. And he had not a word against Perón. Because he had a law suit in Buenos Aires, that was explained to me afterwards, and he didn't care to risk anything. And so, when he was supposed to be writing at the top of his voice, full of noble indignation, he had not a word to say against Perón. And he was married to an Argentine lady, he knew that many of his friends had been sent to jail. He knew all about the state of our country, but not a word against him. At the same time, he was speaking against the United States, knowing the whole thing was a lie, no? But, of course, that doesn't mean anything against his poetry. Neruda is a very fine poet, a great poet in fact. And when they gave Miguel de Asturias the Nobel Prize, I said that it should have been given to Neruda! Now when I was in Chile, and we were on different political sides, I think he did the best thing to do. He went on a holiday during the three or four days I was there so there was no occasion for our meeting. But I think he was acting politely, no? Because he knew that people would be playing him up against me, no? I mean, I was an Argentine, poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Page 96.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

People , Lie , Books , Law

“If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as well.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Truth , Falseness

“Kill the gringo. What I mean is we must kill the gringo economically and politically but not necessarily physically unless, of course, the worst comes to the worst.”

José Ángel Gutiérrez (1944) American academic

page 10523 of HOUSE OF REPRESE.NTATIVES-Monday, April 28, 1969. This is on page 27/99 of the part 8-5 PDF https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1969-pt8/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1969-pt8-5.pdf ( archive http://archive.is/753l4). According to Behnken this was said "a few weeks later" to clarify the preceding MAYO rally quote. Gonzalez describes it as "Last Tuesday, at Kingsville" indicating it was said 22 April 1969.

“It is time to recognize that financial markets are inherently unstable. Imposing market discipline means imposing instability, and how much instability can society take? … To put it bluntly, the choice confronting us is whether we will regulate global financial markets internationally or leave it to each individual state to protect its interests as best it can. The latter course will surely lead to the breakdown of the gigantic circulatory system, which goes under the name of global capitalism.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

Time

“On the Right we have a bunch of regressive conservatives who demonize minorities and women and have no sympathy for the downtrodden, while on the Left we have regressive Leftists who try to censor people’s speech, take the side of extremist Islamists against women and gays, and shut down disagreement by other Leftists who aren’t pure enough. What is a person to do? The answer, of course, is to call out both sides for regressive behavior.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" More bigotry at Britain’s National Union of Students https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/more-bigotry-at-britains-national-union-of-students/" July 20, 2016

Women , People , Behavior , Personality

“They never forgot
That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”

W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts

Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)

Life , Dogs , Tree , Horse

“Beautiful women, as experienced men know,
Are but darkness wrapped in dazzling light aglow.
A life of friv'lous youth and worried age,
Its futile course to futile death will flow.”

Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) Arabic poet from the Abbasid era

A Young Soul

Life , Death , Women , Men

“Welcome to Raw Is Jericho! And I am the new millennium for the World Wrestling Federation. Now for those of you who don't know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host, and most importantly, the most charismastic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen. And for those of you who DO know me, well, all hail the Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!
Now when you think of the new millennium, you think of an event so gigantic that it changes the course of history. You think of a dawning of a new era. In this case, the dawning of a new era in the WWF. Thank you, thank you. And a new era is what this once proud and profitable company sorely needs. What was once a captivating, trend-setting program has now deteriorated into a cliched, let's be honest, boring snoozefest that is in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and that's why I'm here. Chris Jericho has come to save the WWF!
Now let's go over the facts. Television ratings, downward spiral; pay-per-view buy-rates, plummeting; mainstream acceptance, non-existent; and reactions of the live crowds, complete and utter silence. And I know why you're silent! You're silent because you're embarrassed to be here. And quite honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. And the reason why you're embarrassed is because of the steady stream of uninteresting, untalented, mediocre "sports entertainers" who you're forced to cheer for and care for. No wonder you're not cheering! You could care less about every single idiot in that dressing room, [indicating The Rock] and especially this idiot in the center of the ring. You people have been led to believe that mediocrity is excellence. Uh-uh. Jericho is excellence. And now for the first time in WWF history, you have a man who can entertain you. You have a man who is good enough for you. You have a man who can make you jump up off your chairs, raise your filthy fat little hands in the air and scream "Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go!"”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

Thank you.
The new millennium has arrived in the WWF, and now that the Y2J problem is here, this company—from the front-office idiots to all the amateurs in the dressing room, including this one, to everybody watching tonight—will never, ee-e-e-e-(slaps face) ever be the same... again!
August 9, 1999 - WWE Raw

People , World , History , Problem

“They should have had a more experienced driver in that Jordan." (referring to of course the fact that Jordan passed up the option of having Martin drive for them and went for youth over experience)”

Martin Brundle (1959) British racecar driver

Youth

“It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders… the practical implementation of this … would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology. By application of these new found laws, I have already constructed fairly large installations in the spheres of log-rafting and river regulation, which as is known, have functioned faultlessly for a decade, and which today still present insoluble enigmas to the various scientific disciplines concerned.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Law , Way , Drink , Nature

“One moral of the above story is, of course, that we must be very careful when we give advice to younger people; sometimes they follow it!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html (EWD340).
1970s
Context: After having programmed for some three years, I had a discussion with A. van Wijngaarden, who was then my boss at the Mathematical Center in Amsterdam, a discussion for which I shall remain grateful to him as long as I live. The point was that I was supposed to study theoretical physics at the University of Leiden simultaneously, and as I found the two activities harder and harder to combine, I had to make up my mind, either to stop programming and become a real, respectable theoretical physicist, or to carry my study of physics to a formal completion only, with a minimum of effort, and to become....., yes what? A programmer? But was that a respectable profession? For after all, what was programming? Where was the sound body of knowledge that could support it as an intellectually respectable discipline? I remember quite vividly how I envied my hardware colleagues, who, when asked about their professional competence, could at least point out that they knew everything about vacuum tubes, amplifiers and the rest, whereas I felt that, when faced with that question, I would stand empty-handed. Full of misgivings I knocked on van Wijngaarden’s office door, asking him whether I could “speak to him for a moment”; when I left his office a number of hours later, I was another person. For after having listened to my problems patiently, he agreed that up till that moment there was not much of a programming discipline, but then he went on to explain quietly that automatic computers were here to stay, that we were just at the beginning and could not I be one of the persons called to make programming a respectable discipline in the years to come? This was a turning point in my life and I completed my study of physics formally as quickly as I could. One moral of the above story is, of course, that we must be very careful when we give advice to younger people; sometimes they follow it!

People

“The predictions of physical theories for the most part concern situations where initial conditions can be precisely specified. If such initial conditions are not found in nature, they can be arranged. Such arrangements are considerably easier to realize with inanimate than with animate matter, because the properties of animate matter are much more sensitive to being tampered with than inanimate matter. In particular, living tissue in vitro may behave quite differently than in situ. Controlled biological experiments are, of course, possible, but they are more difficult and their scope is more limited than that of physical experiments. For this reason, biology has had to depend to a greater extent than physics on theories of larger speculative scope, in which reasoning by imaginative analogy plays a more important role.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport (1956) "The Search for Simplicity"
1950s

Imagination , Nature , Animals , Parting

“Well, despite what many gay “marriage” activists say, having two mummies or two daddies does not replace God’s design of one mum and one dad. God designed marriage—for one man and one woman—from the very beginning and blessed this union and said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This is God’s design for the family! And since God is the all-wise, all-knowing Creator, what He designed is obviously the only true way for us, not what sinful, fallible human beings try to make. Of course, no family is perfect—we live in a fallen world that is groaning from sin—but we are not at liberty to change the design for marriage and family that was given to us by our Creator. When we do, disaster is around the corner. I encourage you to be bold in standing on God’s Word and refusing to compromise with man’s ideas about what a marriage or a family should look like. We need to unashamedly uphold the design given to us by our Creator.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Gay “Marriage”—Tragic for America’s Children https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/07/13/gay-marriage-tragic-americas-children/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 13, 2015)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God , Marriage , World , Family

“I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded as its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained State in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Out of My Life (London: Cassell, 1920), pp. 236-237
Retirement

War , World , Home , Imagination

“You usually think... that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around… You are… literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, (1981), p. 148-149

Way , Feeling , Thinking

“From a more theoretical viewpoint, one can focus on the nexus between the present and the future. A financial instrument typically represents a property right to receive future cash flows. Such cash flows will, of course, come in the future – hence the economics of time must be understood. In many cases the flows are uncertain, hence the need for an approach to the economics of uncertainty. In addition, cash flows in the far future may depend on actions taken (or not taken) in the near future. This gives rise to the need for a theory of the economics of options (broadly construed). Finally, one needs information to estimate likely future outcomes, hence the requirement for an understanding of the economics of information. I define financial economics so that it embraces all four of these important, difficult, and fascinating aspects of economics.”

William F. Sharpe (1934) American economist

William Sharpe’s February 1992 lecture at Trinity University: in: William Breit, ‎Barry T. Hirsch (2009). Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-three Nobel Economists. p. 172

Understanding , Time , Future , Dependency

“An illness is a failure to solve a mental or psychological problem in the correct manner... The energy that would be used to solve the problem instead is spent maintaining the illness. It is therefore necessary that an attempt be made as soon as possible to solve the problem, which of course must first be discovered by the ego, which has avoided it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 159, Page 68
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

Failure , Problem

“I truly wanted to be a character actor. People ask me, ‘When are you going to get the lead?’ and I say, ‘I don’t want the lead.’ I always use John Carradine – I don’t know why – but John Carradine to me was more of the classic character actor who would literally show up and do three lines in a big Hollywood movie and then have a bigger part in the sequel to The Invisible Man. That career is so great. That is part of my… I don’t know if it’s a set plan, but I always seem to follow that course.”

Kevin J. O'Connor (actor) (1963) American actor

Exclusive Interview: Kevin J O'Connor http://www.chud.com/14305/exclusive-interview-kevin-j-oconnor-there-will-be-blood-dvd/ (April 8, 2008)

People , Parting

“In the twentieth century no one's hands were clean. Korean troops committed more atrocities per capita than Americans, in Vietnam. Vietnam of course attacked Cambodia. Japan attacked almost everyone. And so on.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

NGO Holiday Card http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/
2010s

“What we mean by the laws of nature, are those laws which are deduced from that series of events, which, by divine appointment, follow each other in the moral and physical world; the former of which we shall here have occasion principally to consider, the present question altogether, respecting the moral government of God — a consideration which our author has entirely neglected, in his estimation of the credibility of miracles. Examining the question therefore upon this principle, it is manifest, that the extraordinary nature of the fact is no ground for disbelief, provided such a fact, in, a moral point of view, was, from the condition of man, become necessary; for in that case, the Deky, by dispensing his assistance in proportion to our wants, acted upon the same principle as in his more 'ordinary operations. For however ' opposite the physical effects may be, if their moral tendency be the same, they form a part of the jmoral law. Now in those actions which are called miracles, the Deity is directed by the same moral principle as in his usual dispensations; and therefore being influenced by the same motive to accomplish the same end, the laws of God's moral government are not violated, such laws being established by the motives and the ends produced, and not by the means employed. To prove therefore the moral laws to be the same in those actions called miraculous, as in common events, it is not the actions thetnselves which are to be considered, but the principles by which they were directed, and their consequences, for if these be the same, the Deity acts by the same laws. And here, moral analogy will be found to confirm the truth of the miracles recorded in scripture. But as the moral government of God is directed by motives which lie beyond the reach of human investigation, we have no principles by which we can judge concerning the probability of the happening of any new event which respects the moral world; we cannot therefore pronounce any extraordinary event of that nature to be a violation of the moral law of God's dispensations; but we can nevertheless judge of its agreement with that law, so far as it has fallen under our observation. But our author leaves out the consideration of God's moral government, and reasons simply -on the facts which arc said to have nappened, without any reference to an end; we will therefore examine how far his conclusions are just upon this principle.
He defines miracles to be "a violation of the laws of nature;" he undoubtedly means the physical laws, as no part of his reasoning has any reference to them in a moral point of view. Now these laws must be deduced, either from his own view of events only, or from that, and testimony jojntly; and if testimony beallowed on one part, it ought also to be admitted on the other, granting that there is no impossibility in the fact attested. But the laws by which the Deity governs the universe can, at best, only be inferred from the whole series of his dispensations from the beginning of the world; testimony must therefore necessarily be admitted in establishing these laws. Now our author, in deducing the laws of nature, rejects all well authenticated miraculous events, granted to be possible, and therefore not altogether incredible and to be rejected without examination, and thence establishes a law to prove against their credibility; but the proof of a position ought to proceed upon principles which are totally independent of any supposition of its being either true or falser. His conclusion therefore is not deduced by just reasoning from acknowledged principles, but it is a necessary consequence of his own arbitrary supposition. "Tis a miracle," says he, "that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country." Now, testimony, confirmed by every proof which can tend to establish a true matter of fact, asserts that such an event; has happened. But our author argues against the credibility of this, because it is contrary to the laws of nature; and in establishing these laws, he rejects all such extraordinary facts, although they are authenticated by all the evidence which such facts can possibly admit of; taking thereby into consideration, events of that kind only which have fallen within the sphere of his own observations, as if the whole series of God's dispensations were necessarily included in the course of a few years. But who shall thus circumscribe the operations of divine power and infinite wisdom, and say, "Hitherto shall thou go, and no further."”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Before he rejected circumstances of this kind in establishing the laws of nature, he should, at least, have shewn, that we have not all that evidence for them which we might "have had" upon supposition that they were true ; he should also have shewn, in a moral point of view, that the events were inconsistent with the ordinary operations of Providence ; and that there was no end to justify the means. Whereas, on the contrary, there is all the evidence for them which a real matter of fact can possibly have ; they are perfectly consistent with all the moral dispensations of Providence and at the same time that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most unexceptionably attested, we discover a moral intention in the miracle, which very satisfactorily accounts for that exertion of divine power?
Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 48; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA259," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 259-261

Life , Wisdom , God , Truth

“Do not thy passions counteract
What thy lips utter?
Thy going in thy course into valleys,
Dark without lights.
And mine were his words.
And mine were his languages.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), Oh God, the God of Formation

Light , Passion

“A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Question , Christ

Quotes about course page 20

Quotes about course
page 20