
"Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), pp. 59-61
"Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), pp. 59-61
2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)
The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Home Page
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s
In Zeenews, "William Dalrymple's book on first Anglo-Afghan war out in December"
Pointed out that the Afghan tribe which resisted 1839 invasion now make up of the foot soldiers of Taliban.
Last Men in London (1932)
Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 212
"The Designers and the Politicians" (1962), later published in Ideas and Integrities : A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1969), p. 234, and The Buckminster Fuller Reader (1970), p. 305
1960s
Context: So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose upon the ignorance of man a monopoly of access to accurate processing of information and can fool even themselves by thought habits governing the becoming behavior of professional specialists, by disclaiming the necessity of, or responsibility for, comprehensive adjustment of the a priori thought to total reality of universal principles. The everywhere-relative velocities and momentums of interactions, of energetic phenomena of universe, are central to the preoccupations and realizations of the comprehensive designer. The concept of relativity involves high frequency of re-established awareness, and progressively integrating consideration of the respective, and also integrated dynamic complexities of the moving and transforming frame of reference and of the integrated dynamic complexities of the observed, as well as of the series of integrated sub-dynamic complexities, in respect to each of the major categories of the relatively moving frames of reference, of the observer and the observed. It also involves constant reference of all the reciprocating sub-sets to the comprehensive totality of non-simultaneous universe, from which naught may be lost.
Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 454.
Context: Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be "sub-critical," i. e., to correspond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are super-critical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole "theory" consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, "Can a machine be made to be super-critical?"
Letter to F.W Weber (1950); published in New York—Pennsylvania Collector (8 August 1991)
Context: How do ideas come? What a question! If they come of their own accord, they are apt to arrive at the most unexpected time and place. For the most part the place is out of doors, for up in this northern wilderness when nature puts on a show it is an inspiring one. There seem to be magic days once in a while, with some rare quality of light that hold a body spellbound: In sub-zero weather there will be a burst of unbelievable color when the mountain turns a deep purple, a thing it refuses to do in summer. Then comes the hard part: how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, air and space, there is no such thing as sitting down outside and trying to make a “portrait” of it. It lasts for only a minute, for one thing, and it isn’t an inspiration that can be copied on the spot...
Quotes, NYU Law School speech (2006)
Context: For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.
Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an "externality." This absurd label means, in essence: we don't need to keep track of this stuff so let's pretend it doesn't exist.
And sure enough, when it's not recognized in the marketplace, it does make it much easier for government, business, and all the rest of us to pretend that it doesn't exist. But what we're pretending doesn't exist is the stuff that is destroying the habitability of the planet.
Reza Pahlavi of Iran Speech at the University Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=427&page=2, Jan. 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010
The Internal Constitution of Stars (1926)
On body horror in “Interview: Tade Thompson” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-tade-thompson/ in Lightspeed Magazine (October 2017)
"Some Newer Instincts", pp. 182–183
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)
“Butler, of course, is sub-human.”
Evelyn Waugh to Ann Fleming (18 July 1963), Mark Amory (ed.), The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), p. 610.