Quotes about experiment (5425 quotes, page 23)

“A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love , Life

“Experience shows that what great role pratice and experience play in education; pratice, the prolonged exercice lead to habit: exemple suggests imitation. Habit can become a second nature, but, wrongly directed (or guided), it may also heighten (or intensify) unfortunate tendencies and be an obstacle to progress.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 57.

Education , Nature

“The role of past experience is of high importance, but what matters is what one has gained from experience — blind, understood connections, or insight into structural inner relatedness. What matters is how and what one recalls, hoVi he applies what is recalled, whether blindly, in a piece meal way, or in accordance with the situation.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

Source: Productive thinking, 1945, p. 62

Way , Past

“My observation continues to confirm me more and more in the opinion, that to experience religion is to experience the truth of the great doctrines of Divine grace.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 163.

Truth , Religion

“Teenage girls
with no life experiences
and boys who
call themselves punk
are on my radio
singing about
how much pain they've endured
and how hard
their lives are”

Damien Echols (1974)

Poem written on Death Row; from Arkansas Literary Forum, Volume 9 2007 http://www.wm3.org/live/thewm3/damien_details.php?id=30, as noted on the Free The West Memphis 3 web site. (url accessed on October 16, 2008).

Life , Pain , Girl , Boy

“Martin Luther once observed that your “god” is that which you most fear to lose. More recently, Paul Tillich defined a “god” as an “Ultimate Concern.” For the influential citizens and decision makers of the Late Bronze Age, the “Ultimate Concerns” they most feared losing were power and prosperity, and the political apparatus that was believed to guarantee both. For the elite, these concerns took precedence over almost every other consideration. Like many modern folk, they found it impossible to conceive of the reality of the divine apart from some social system of coercion and force. To worship Baal and Asherah was to affirm the supreme value that power and wealth played in making all human life and experience meaningful.This sort of pagan religious ideology almost inevitably sows the seeds of its own demise. Where power and wealth are the predominant concerns and sacred ends, society dissolves into a self-destructive struggle to obtain them. And the more widely held such a religious ideology, the more widespread the violence will likely be, destroying especially those who most faithfully embrace it.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction the Bible in Context (2001)

Life , God , Age , Fear

“It is impossible for a poet to fashion the voice deliberately by contrivance and experiment; it could not be discovered or simulated through the cultivation of an eccentric diction or prosody, or by the employment of regional speech rhythms and patterns.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Fashion

“As the pattern of events is unaltered by motion, the mechanism must be the same when the electron is in motion as when it is at rest. But experiment shows that an electron in motion exerts additional forces which are not the same for all directions in space; if we picture this electron as moving head-foremost through space, these forces surround it like a belt around its waist.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 19 (p. 226)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Freedom

“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man... All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied... No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

(76-77) [ellipsis added]
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love , Life , God , School

“The reality of the situation is obscured when population is expressed as a percentage proportion taken over the whole of the United Kingdom. The ethnic minority is geographically concentrated, so that areas in which it forms a majority already exists, and these areas are destined inevitably to grow. It is here that the compatibility of such an ethnic minority with the functioning of parliamentary democracy comes into question. Parliamentary democracy depends at all levels upon the valid acceptance of majority decision, by which the nation as a whole is content to be bound because of the continually available prospect that what one majority has decided another majority can subsequently alter. From this point of view, the political homogeneity of the electorate is crucial. What we do not, as yet, know is whether the voting behaviour of our altered population will be able to use the majority vote as a political instrument and not as a means of self-identification, self-assertion and self-enumeration. It may be that the United Kingdom will escape the political consequences of communalism; but communalism and democracy, as the experience of India demonstrates, are incompatible. That is the spectre which the Conservative party's policy of assisted repatriation in the 1960s aimed to banish; but time and events have swept over and passed the already outdated remedies of the 1960s. We are entering unknown territory where the only certainty for the future is the relative increase of the ethnic minority due to the age structure of that population which has been established.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Article on the 25th anniversary of his 'Rivers of Blood speech', The Times (20 April 1993), p. 18
1990s

Age , Democracy , Communication , Question

“Disagreement between theory and experiment has proved a most potent agent in broadening theoretical views, and in making clear the necessity for new concepts or hypotheses.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)

“I remember a few years ago I was watching this astronaut from the space shuttle, talking about his experiences in space and talking about what earth looked like to him from above.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

“You can think of the curriculum as the shadows cast on a wall by the light of education itself as it shines over, under, around, and through the myriad phases of our experience. It is a mistake to be sure to take these shadows for the reality, but they are something that helps us find or grasp or intuit that reality. The false notions that there is a fixed curriculum, that there is a list of things that an educated person ought to know, and that the shadow-exercises on the wall themselves are the content of education—these false notions all come from taking too seriously what was originally a wise recognition—the recognition that the shadows do in fact provide a starting point in our attempt to fully envision reality.”

Andrew Abbott (1948) American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Abott (2002) “Welcome to the University of Chicago http://www.ditext.com/abbott/abbott_aims.html Aims of Education Address. 2002

Education , Exercises , Thinking , Reality

“I have been reading of late, most carefully, oh such an exciting mass of Anarchist Literature sent to me by old Emma Goldman who is my Prime Minister & chief Political Philosopher! and every week I get the anarchist paper from Avenue A New York City and also the ‘Bulletin of Information’ from the Anarchists of Barcelona. This latter pamphlet I am carefully keeping; because it is not so much concerned with the war as with their experiment in Catalonia of organizing their life on Anarchist lines and getting rid of all Dictatorship & of the ‘Sovereign State’.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

Letter to his sister (24 September 1938), published in The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Philippa Powys (1996), edited by Anthony Head p. 106

Life , War , Literature , Reading

“To many, our democratic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter. The politics of self-interest and catering to narrow special interests is so dominant that so many ask themselves: Why vote? … The political discourse is so formulaic, so tailored into poll-driven, focus-group-approved slogans that don't really say anything substantive or strike at the core of our lived experience.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

"Cornel West: Democracy Matters" in The Globalist (24 January 2005)

Faith

“Having gone through that experience of being in a Cambridge college, surviving it and building myself up, meant that coming here (Westminster) was a walk in the park, and a lot of the same people are here!”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

‘I’ve been in some horrific situations’ - MP http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/i-ve-been-in-some-horrific-situations-mp-1-7642788, The Yorkshire Post (26 December 2015)

People

“However, suicides and would-be suicides often have such a great literal lust for life that they constantly put it into jeopardy, so that they can experience what it is in heightened form.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 735, Page 574
The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979)

Life , Suicide

“If getting used to music is the essential condition for understanding, it is hard to see just what purpose is served by writing about it. A few experiences of listening to a symphony or nocturne are worth more than any essay or analysis. The work of art itself teaches us how to understand it, and makes the critic not merely parasitical but strictly superfluous.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Art , Music , Understanding

“I observe, that of late Chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by Learned Men who before despis’d it; and to be pretended to by many who never cultivated it, that they may be thought not to ignore it: Whence it is come to passe, that divers Chymical Notions about Matters Philosophical are taken for granted and employ’d, and so adopted by very eminent Writers both Naturalists and Physitians. Now this I fear may prove somewhat prejudicial to the Advancement of solid Philosophy: For though I am a great Lover of Chymical Experiments, and though I have no mean esteem of divers Chymical Remedies, yet I distinguish these from their Notions about the causes of things, and their manner of Generation.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Source: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Preface Introductory to the Following Treatise

Men , Fear , Lovers , Learning

“So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.”

Beverly Sills (1929–2007) opera soprano

As quoted in Newsweek, Vol. 103, (1984), p. iv

“Such is our ideal – not another museum, another bleak exhibition gallery, another classical building in which insulated and classified specimens of a culture are displayed for instruction, but an adult play-centre, a workshop where work is a joy, a source of vitality and daring experiment. We may be mocked for our naive idealism, but at least it will not be possible to say that an expiring civilisation perished without a creative protest.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

On the occasion of the opening of Forty Years of Modern Art (February 1948)
Literary Quotes

Joy

“Our reliance on naturalism, then, is not an assumption decided in advance, but a result of experience—the experience of men like Darwin and Laplace who found that the only way forward was to posit natural rather than supernatural explanations. Because of this success, and the recurrent failure of supernaturalism to explain anything about the universe, naturalism is now taken for granted as the guiding principle of science.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 92

Men , Way , Failure , Nature

“In philosophical anthropology, … where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 147

Way , Nature , Science , Parting

“The innovation leader’s job is to execute a disciplined experiment.”

Vijay Govindarajan (1949) American academic

Source: How Stella Saved the Farm. 2013, p. 131

“I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new. I didn't want to get into something which is played out and narrow. I want to do as I like, invent my own interests. Of course, that doesn't mean that people who, like Newman, still paint are worn out. But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment. I think what I'm trying to deal with is something more long range than that in a way, more obscure perhaps, more involved with things that happen over a longer time perhaps. At least it's another area of experience.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Quoted in: Donald Jud http://www.theartstory.org/artist-judd-donald.htm at theartstory.org, 2014
1960s, "Oral history interview with Donald Judd," 1965

People , Way , Thinking , Time

“[The Hawthorne studies was] perhaps the first major social science experiment… and we feel that continued efforts in this direction will yield rich returns in the development of the social sciences.”

William Foote Whyte (1914–2000) American sociologist

William Foote Whyte (1946), Industry and Society, New York. p. v-vi; Cited in: Richard Gillespie (1993), Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments. p. 255

Feeling , Effort , Study , Science

“It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

The Bill Of Rights (1958), p. 72.
Extra-judicial writings

Dependency

“What is lost when the private realm is abolished are many of the attributes typically associated with quality of life. Most people have experienced how privacy enables liberation from constraint. And we’ve all, conversely, had the experience of engaging in private behavior when we thought we were alone – dancing, confessing, exploring sexual expression, sharing untested ideas – only to feel shame at having been seen by others.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, pages 173-174.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Life , People , Behavior , Feeling

“The realization of the pathetic frailty of the knowledge or beliefs on which our life depends thus leads not to despair but to open-eyed courage. But it also points to a most intimate connection between scientific method and liberal civilization. Science is not, as is popularly conceived, a new set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of priests called scientists. It is rather a method which is based on a critical attitude to all plausible and self-evident propositions. It seeks not to reject them, but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives, each to receive the same logical treatment before we can determine which is the better grounded, is the essence of liberalism in art, morals, and politics.... Like science, liberalism insists on a critical examination of the content of all our beliefs, principles, or initial hypotheses and on subjecting them to a continuous process of verification so that they will be progressively better founded in experience and reason.”

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947) American philosopher

Language in Thought and Action, p. 271, (1939), S.I. Hayakawa

Life , Art , Courage , Support

“Christianity depends finally on consciousness and experience. From other departments of the mind she may retire at times or seem to, but never from this. Sitting here, if allowed to, on the throne of the soul, she occasionally walks into the other rooms and sets them in order; and accustomed lo her presence, sooner or later the soul finds every department flooded with her light.”

Erastus Otis Haven (1820–1881) American Methodist Episcopal bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 134.

Soul , Light , Time , Dependency

“The song cycle is the most original musical form created in the first half of the nineteenth century. It most clearly embodies the Romantic conception of experience as a gradual unfolding and illumination of reality in place of the Classical insistence on an initial clarity. The form of Schubert's song cycle is not less precise than that of a Classical sonata, but its precision is only gradually comprehended as it unfolds.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 3 : Mountains and Song Cycles

Music , Reality

“When you are very young, you tend to accept standards for such momentous judgments as to whether a girl is beautiful; when you reach the age of experience you come to know beauty in the sense that “knowing” is to possess. Beauty does more than reflect light, it is the action of energy on form, glowing as a total function. This is singularly true of a grouse dog in his consecration to his bird.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Age , Beauty , Dogs , Girl

“I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. These, Govinda, are some of the thoughts in my mind.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Siddhartha (1922)

Love , World , Learning , Perfection

“Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in a footnote Freud added to the Second Edition in 1909 (see Psychoanalytic Pioneers, p. 46 http://books.google.com/books?id=Fro5MZry5FcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA46#v=onepage&q&f=false.)
1900s

Birth

“Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel’s childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and the triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things—the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossing and connections casual, dialogues imminently (sic) forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 284)

Life , Family , Wedding , Memory

“Because he never raises his eyes to the great and the meaningful, the philistine has taken experience as his gospel. It has become for him a message about life's commonness. But he has never grasped that there exists something other than experience, that there are values—inexperienceable—which we serve.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"Experience" (1913) as translated by L. Spencer and S. Jost, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (1996), p. 4

Life

“The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience.
…The ancients knew a few numerical laws… But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. …the new science …not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)

Law , Birth , Nature , Study

“I began to reconcile myself to my forlorn condition, but still I was not what I wished to be: the worst of all was, I had no friend; not a human being that understood me. I wrote daily to my friend Leisewitz; he resided in Hanover, and was just as unhappy as myself, except that he had some friends, and plenty of money. In this respect I was differently situated, and although in want of money to buy books, I was determined not to be any expense to my father. Some watches, snuff-boxes, and rings, presents I had received in Gottingen, soon found their way to the hands of Jews at half price. I was even, against my will, driven to the necessity of accepting small fees from mechanics and peasants. This cut me to the heart; but I could not help myself. The following circumstance, however, overcame me more than all: My father was a man of great knowledge and experience, but, like all old men, he remained faithful to the old method of practice. I visited many of his patients, and without telling me exactly what mode of treatment I was to pursue, he only observed, "You will act so and sohowever, I saw the patients had confidence in my father only, and not in me; they wished me to be his tool, and I therefore followed his mode of practice, and thus lost several of his patients, who could have been saved had I followed my own method.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Men , Money , Books , Faith

“Go far—too far you cannot, still the farther
The more experience finds you: And go sparing;—
One meal a week will serve you, and one suit,
Through all your travels; for you'll find it certain,
The poorer and the baser you appear,
The more you look through still.”

John Fletcher The Woman's Prize

The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (c. 1611; published 1647), Act IV, scene 5, line 199.

Travel , Appearance

“The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.”

George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)

Way , Drink , Science , Tea

“The Russian Armies and all the peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defence of their hearths and homes. … The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered. For the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands—literally scores of thousands—of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (24 August 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1173
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People , Home , Time

“I have read with very great interest Mr. Metcalfe's paper, as we at the Midvale Steel Co. have had the experience, during the past ten years, of organizing a system very similar to that of Mr. Metcalfe. The chief idea in our system, as in his, is, that the authority for doing all kinds of work should proceed from one central office to the various departments, and that there proper records should be kept of the work and reports made daily to the central office, so that the superintending department should be kept thoroughly informed as to what is taking place throughout the works, and at the same time no work could be done in the works without proper authority. The details of the system have been very largely modified as time went on, and a consecutive plan, such as Mr. Metcalfe proposed, would have been of great assistance to us in carrying out our system. There are certain points, however, in Mr. Metcalfe's plan, which I think our experience shows to be somewhat objectionable. He issues to each of the men a book, something like a check-book, containing sheets which they tear out, and return to the office after stating on them the work which they have done. We have found that any record which passes through the average workman's hands, and which he holds for any length of time, is apt either to be soiled or torn. We have, therefore, adopted the system of having our orders sent from the central office to the small offices in the various departments of the works, in each of which there is a clerk who takes charge of all orders received from, and records returned to, the central office, as well as of all records kept in the department.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

F.W. Taylor (1886), " Comment to "The Shop-Order System of Accounts https://archive.org/stream/transactionsof07amer#page/475/mode/1up," by Henry Metcalfe in: Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol 7 (1885-1886), p. 475; Partly cited in: Charles D. Wrege, ‎Ronald G. Greenwood (1991), Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management. p. 204.

Men , Books , Idea , Thinking

“Everything that used to be foreign to me, at the rational procedures in my profession, I now beging to resort to after all, from necessity, at least as a matter of experiment. Apparently I am becoming perfectly sober and small, perfectly unpoetic and unenthusiastic. I imagine a very small formal motif and try to execute it economically.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (July 1902), # 425, in The Diaries of Paul Klee - 1898-1918, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1968
1895 - 1902

Imagination

“The problem with Punk and the straightedge lifestyle is that he doesn’t experience the things that John Morrison experiences.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

Problem

“The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiments of this vertiginous period. He is like a man in a high-powered motor-car that has got out of control. He must either steer it away from the cliff's edge back to the road or leap out of it altogether. Most modern composers have chosen the latter plan, remarking, as they dexterously save their precious lives: "I think motor-cars are a little vieux jeu”

Constant Lambert (1905–1951) British composer and conductor

don't you?"
"The Age of Pastiche", p. 70.
Music, Ho! (1934)

Cars , Thinking

“In a way, your law school becomes part of your extended family. I say this because once you graduate with your Juris Doctor degree you are essentially married to that particular institution. No matter what your experience or opinion of the place, your alma mater is a name you cannot escape. The individuals that attend law school with you will be your life-long partners as you progress from a common starting point. Understanding the basic principles of professional networking, and utilizing the knowledge while on your law school campus, will reap a lifetime of rewards and provide you with many genuinely enhancing relationships.”

Don West, Jr.

in [Ann K. Levine, Esq., The Law School Admission Game: Play Like An Expert http://www.lawschoolexpertbook.com/, Abraham Publishing, Inc, 2009, 978-0-615-27183-5, 148-149]

Life , School , Family , Law

“Another useful way to avoid confusion [used by e. g. Allen Newell 1990 Unified Theories of Cognition] is to reserve the term "consciousness" for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term "awareness" for the more straightforward phenomena… If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about "consciousness" are frequently talking past each other.”

David Chalmers (1966) Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist

"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness," 1995

Way , Communication , Past

“There are many ways in which a woman experiences a greater sense of powerlessness than her male counterpart: the fears of pregnancy, aging, rape, date rape, and being physically overpowered; less socialization to take a career that pays enough to support a husband and children[…] Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences. Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the female experience.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 28.

Children , Age , Fear , Way

“To one extent or another, then, you learn to constantly monitor your behavior, so that it conforms to the established criteria set up for sane or rational experience. You are social creatures, as the animals are. Despite many of your cherished, erroneous beliefs, your nations exist as the result of cooperation, not competition, as do all social groupings.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 758, Page 23
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

Behavior , Learning , Animals

“My experience of the original Edison phonograph goes back to the period when it was first introduced into this country. In fact, I have good reason to believe that I was among the very first persons in London to make a vocal record, though I never received a copy of it, and if I did it got lost long ago. It must have been in 1881 or 1882, and the place where the deed was done was on the first floor of a shop in Hatton Garden, where I had been invited to listen to the wonderful new invention. To begin with, I heard pieces both in song and speech produced by the friction of a needle against a revolving cylinder, or spool, fixed in what looked like a musical box. It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct.”

Herman Klein (1856–1934) British musical critic journalist and singing teacher

The Gramophone magazine, December 1933

Music , Singing , Time , Personality

“It’s just like when the Allies were victorious over Nazi Germany in World War II, when we occupied the country, we left a lot of Nazis in place because they were the ones who made the trains run on time and the bureaucracy function properly, etc. And it was distasteful, but you needed them. And in fact, our experience in Iraq kind of demonstrates the wisdom of that, because in Iraq we replaced the Baathist bureaucrats and the result was chaos. Not to compare Wall Street to Iraq or Nazi Germany, but the point is you need people who know what they’re doing.”

Mark Haines (1946–2011) American journalist and television show presenter

Wisdom , War , People , World

“Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious.”

David Chalmers book The Conscious Mind

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996)

World

“For all human beings, love is a constant preoccupation—a never-ending central theme. Indeed, the ultimate motivation behind interactions among people is often the desire to experience some form of love. The fact that love is so important has major implications for leadership. In particular, the degree to which leaders acknowledge the value of love in their own lives and in the lives of others can determine the success or failure of their undertakings. Far from being irrelevant or impractical, the intention to express love is fundamental for effective leadership. This is so because in the final analysis, a leader’s motivation is communicated to others in countless subtle ways. Leaders whose actions are perceived as self-serving often create disharmony, resentment, and disloyalty. On the other hand, those who base their behavior upon a genuine empathy and concern for others can gain loyalty and support that make the attainment of even difficult goals possible.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Leadership For An Age of Higher Consciousness, Volume 1: Administration from a Metaphysical Perspective (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: The Phenomenon of Love

Love , People , Way , Behavior

“Darwin’s model of evolution. . . , being basically a theory of historical reconstruction,. . . is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as is normal in science. . . Moreover, the theory of evolution deals with a series of unique events, the origin of life, the origin of intelligence and so on. Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 75

Life , Intelligence , Science

“So is the song of life being sung/ By us and by all the living beings/ A melodious and harmonious song,/ Where the singer loses her own self/ And absorbs in the wonderful harmony of the song!/ An almost ecstatic experience.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

Life

“Man’s tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence.... It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam’s fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present—namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,’ and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.’ Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory’ of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.237 (John S. Whale: Christian Doctrine. 1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 52)

Life , Men , God , History

“Suppose you want to teach the "cat" concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying "kitty" each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience. They should come one at a time; too many at once overload the circuits.”

Ralph P. Boas Jr. (1912–1992) American mathematician

[Can We Make Mathematics Intelligible?, The American Mathematical Monthly, 88, 10, 1981, 727–731, 10.2307/2321471]

Cats , Idea , Time

“…yet we are told that this great nation, with such a record of splendid achievements in the past and in the present, is unfit to make its own laws, is unfit to control its own finance, and that it is to be placed as if it were a nation of children or lunatics, under the tutelage and guardianship of some other body—and what body? Who are the guardians of this mighty people? Who are they? With all respect, I shall have to make exceptions; but I am speaking of them as a whole. … They are men who have neither the training, the qualifications, nor the experience which would fit them for such a gigantic task. They are men whose sole qualification—speaking in the main, and for the majority of them—they are simply men whose sole qualification is that they are the first born of persons who had just as little qualification as themselves.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 178-179.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men , Children , People , Law

“It's important to be open to new experiences. I recently went to Disneyland for the first time in 20 years. There were three of us 60-year-olds on a rollercoaster, screaming our heads off. It was white knuckles all the way and I loved it!”

Lulu (singer) (1948) Scottish singer, actress, and television personality

I'm through with having Botox, says pop diva Lulu, 2008-03-31, 2008-03-31, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=550849&in_page_id=1879,

Love , Way , Time

“In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth. He came two thousand years ago and, after imparting a universal path to God's kingdom, was crucified and resurrected; his reappearance to the masses now is not necessary for the fulfillment of his teachings. What is necessary is for the cosmic wisdom and divine perception of Jesus to speak again through each one's own experience and understanding of the infinite Christ Consciousness that was incarnate in Jesus. That will be his true Second Coming.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

Wisdom , God , Understanding , Universe

“My experience with first-time directors is that they’re all extremely prepared, because I guess they’re worried. They spend weeks preparing everything, and they have to get used to the fact that once you get there, everything goes wrong and you have to make everything up.”

Matthew Broderick (1962) American film, stage and voice actor

"Matthew Broderick on John Hughes, the Never-Finished Margaret, and His New Film Wonderful World" by Kyle Buchanan, in Movieline (7 January 2010) http://www.matthewbroderick.net/interview/movieline100107.html

Time

“I am ready to concede that the rule of adherence to precedent, though it ought not to be abandoned, ought to be in some degree relaxed. I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. … That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Pages 150-51
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Justice , Law , Thinking , Sense

“Combat leaves a lasting impression on men’s minds, changing them as radically as any crucial experience through which they live.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 371

Men , Change

“It's an amazing and exhilarating thing to experience gravity lift away from around the body.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

“Memory is a fascinating trickster. Words and images have enormous power and can easily displace actual experience over the years.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Literary bias on the slippery slope", p. 249
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Memory

“Immediate reality is outside that window; so big it is, so much of it, everything entangled in everything else… What large thought Sabbath was struggling to express? Is he asking, "Whatever did happen to my own true life?" Was it taking place elsewhere? But how then can looking out of this window be so gigantically real? Well, that is the difference between the true and the real. We don't get to live in the truth. That's why Nikki ran away. She was an idealist, an innocent, touching, talented illusionist who wanted to live in the truth. Well, if you found it, kid, you're the first. In my experience the direction of life is toward incoherence—precisely what you would never confront. Maybe that was the only coherent thing you could think to do: die to deny incoherence.”

Philip Roth book Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath's Theater (1995)

Life , Truth , Thinking , Reality

“Understanding the total impact of the patriarchy on the female experience is endlessly elusive. … It is a constant process, perpetually blurred by the ebb and flow of so many epiphanies clouded by self-doubt.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Understanding

“Our universities, after a few aberrant decades of experimenting with open inquiry and the advance of knowledge, have reverted to their medieval purpose (the purpose that Chinese higher education always had): to train an intellectual elite for the propagation and defense of the state ideology. Then it was Christianity (in China, Confucianism); now it is utopian egalitarianism—“political correctness,” the Narrative.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Two Bad Answers http://takimag.com/article/two_bad_answers_john_derbyshire/print#axzz33lq12wO9, Taki's Magazine, June 5, 2014.

Education , Knowledge , Universe , Training

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 7

God , Pain , Search , Communication

“Now, my dear Lord, I am completely confused. I have tried to attract You, but I see I have nothing to attract You with. I am a pretender. I want Your kingdom, without You. I am a criminal who has tried to plead innocent, and now I have nowhere to hide, no presentations to make. What am I to do, dear Lord?
Then I heard the Lord say: “You have always been, and always will be dear to Me, but you do not believe it. Therefore you separate us by being an enemy to yourself. Come on, My child, and experience what it is to be fully dear to Me.””

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, The Beggar, Volume I: Meditations and Prayers on the Supreme Lord (Hari-Nama Press, 1994)

“I believe that there are varying points of contact. You have to be able to see the whole thing first. All great paintings are sculptures – there's so much of the factualness about it that a great painting forces you into a visual, physical movement of yourself. That's what determines the way you experience a painting kinetically. You move closer, you sight down it, you till your head, you step back, you feel as though you are in it. That being in it is just as important as looking from a distance.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way , Feeling , Painting

“The difficult decisions first began in December 1964, when I refused to join a Progress Labor Party group preparing to go ‘underground.’ They ended with the most difficult choice—to leave the movement silently, quietly, as so many other had done before, or to risk the censure of those who had once been my friends and tell of the personal experience, political truths, and illegal activities that forced me to ‘split.’ The friends who were no longer friendly, the attempts at personal slander, the chorus that now sang out my name as the most dangerous enemy of all, the attempts to isolate me—all were expected. But the contemptuous and defamatory quality of the attacks were not, and the only thing one can say is that the Old and New Left have this something in common—they have no scruples when it comes to one who sways from their prescribed faith.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 3

Truth , Faith , Decision , Personality

“The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

“Once in a while, when it comes to taking risks, youthful naivete pays better dividends than do knowledge and experience.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 86

Youth , Knowledge

“But when we have reached this conclusive conviction that the roots of our experience and our experimental knowledge are parts of our own spontaneous life, we then readily come to see, further, that the system of our several elements of consciousness a priori is precisely what we must really understand by our unifying or enwholing self, — is exactly what we try to express when we say we have a soul, and that this soul possesses real knowledge; that is, a hold upon eternal things. The realm of the eternal, in short, then becomes for us just the realm of our self-active intelligence; and this it is which, if we can show its reality in detail, will prove to be the clue to our immortal being.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.298

Life , Soul , Intelligence , Understanding

“So how are you going to recognise God if He comes on earth? Are you going to ask to see His identity card or passport? See if it says, 'Name … God; Occupation … Generator, Operator, Destroyer'? That's foolish! Or are you going to recognise Him only if He fits your mental picture of Him -- what you have picked up from scriptures and other impressions, what you imagine Jesus or Krishna looked like? But even two Christians will have different impressions of what Jesus will look like. So what will be recognised by one will not be recognised by the other. But the test of the Perfect Master is that which is undeniable to everybody and that is the experience of Himself, which He can give, and that is the True Knowledge.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

from "The Sayings of Guru Maharaj Ji" - Published by Shri Hans Publications, 148-150 Lordship Lane, London SE22, Copyright Divine Light Mission 1974.
1970s

God , Imagination , Knowledge , Perfection

“If I ever became president, I'd push with every ounce of power I had for Congress to pass something else into law: Every elected federal official must predesignate an individual in their immediate family who has to begin military service—the moment that official casts an affirmative vote toward going to war. This could be a grandchild, a niece or nephew, but someone. It doesn't mean they necessarily go to the war zone. What it does mean is that they and their family experience some personal discomfort because of this decision. Going to war should bring difficulty, especially to those who are the orchestrators or the authorizers. Right now, it's far too easy for them to go on TV with their bleeding hearts and give standing ovations to our service personnel. War should not be laissez-faire. If you're not willing to send someone from your family, how can you be so willing to send someone else's?”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 14 (p. 270)

War , Family , Law , Decision

“In this universe, experience counts.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 8 (p. 142)

Universe

“It was an experience of great interest to me to meet Premier Stalin … It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war – but that, after all, is a matter which deeds not words will prove.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, September 8, 1942 "War Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1942/sep/08/war-situation#column_95.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Life , Wisdom , Men , War

“Shortly after the ignominious expulsion of the Texas invaders, General J. H. Carleton was appointed to the command of this Department, and with the greatest promptitude he turned his attention to the freeing of the Territory from these lawless savages. To this great work he brought many years' experience and a perfect knowledge of the means to effect that end. He saw that the thirty (30) millions of dollars expended and the many lives lost in the former attempts at the subjugation, would not have been profitless, had not there been something radically wrong in the policy pursued. He was not long in ascertaining that treaties were as promises written in sand. nor in discovering that they had no recognized 'Head' authority to represent them; that each chief's influence and authority was immediately confined to his own followers or people; that any treaty signed by one or more of these chiefs had no binding effect on the remainder, and that there were a large number of the worst characters who acknowledged no chief at all. Hence it was that on all occasions when treaties were made, one party were continuing their depredations, whilst the other were making peace. And hence it was apparent that treaties were absolutely powerless for good. He adopted a new policy, i. e., placing them on a reservation (the wisdom of which is already manifest); a new era dawned on New Mexico, and the dying hope of the people was again revived; never more I trust, to meet with disappointment. He first organized a force against the Mescalero Apaches, which I had the honor to command. After a short and inexpensive campaign, the Mescaleros were placed on their present reservation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

Wisdom , People , Peace , Hope

“Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 1, P. 7

Life , Way , Problem , Madness

“Our evils are due mainly to the failure to apply to our international relationships knowledge which is of practically universal possession, often self-evident in the facts of daily life and experience.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Life , Failure , Knowledge , Universe

“The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.”

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

Statement (5 February 1921), p. 40
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Soul , Time

“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

“That the climate has always changed. It has never been static. In the past it has seen extremes hotter and colder than what we experience today. So change is normal.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts http://townhall.com/columnists/billsteigerwald/2009/04/20/talking_climate_change_with_anthony_watts/page/full/, townhall.com, Apr 20, 2009.
2009

Change , Past

“Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man. The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner. They could afford to hire people. Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past. Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

People , Past , Clothes

“Born and brought up in New York City and having survived and thrived there, I carry with me a cargo of memories, some painful and some pleasant, which have remained in the hold of my mind. I have an ancient mariner’s need to share my accumulation of experience and observations. Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak and the never-ending struggle to prevail…or at least to survive.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIII, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life , Death , Pain , Memory

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book Doctrine and Covenants

Doctrine and Covenants, 121:39 (20 March 1839)
1830s

Men , Sadness , Exercises , Nature

“He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Men , God , People , World

“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

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem. We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that "against this every man should raise his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who wrote this admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions seriatim, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter http://books.google.com/books?vid=0Fz_zz_wSWAiVg9LI1&id=vvVVhCadyK4C&pg=PA192&vq=%22impeachment+is+an+impracticable+thing%22&dq=%22jeffersons+works%22 to Thomas Ritchie (25 December 1820)
1820s

Life , Books , Law , Decision