Quotes about testing
page 9

“He who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious only to bribe the examiner.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

“America's greatness is built on the principles of liberty and preserved by the men and women who wear the uniform to defend it. As I have said on numerous occasions, a religious test for entering our country is not reflective of these fundamental values. I reject it. Many Muslim Americans have served valiantly in our military, and made the ultimate sacrifice. Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice—and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan—should always be honored. Period.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Statement http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/statement-house-speaker-paul-ryan (July 31, 2016)

Women, Men, Country

“The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Freedom

“What makes MOND particularly intriguing is that it predicted many effects that could not even be tested when I formulated it.”

Mordehai Milgrom (1946) Israeli physicist

"Dark Matter Heretic," 2003

“Now the leap by which this reasoning lands us in labour as the sole constituent element of value appears to me so surprising that I am prepared to learn that the yet unpublished portions of Das Kapital contain supplementary or elucidatory matter which may set it in a new light. Meanwhile the analysis appears to be given as complete and adequate, so far as it goes, and I can, therefore, only take it as I find it and try to test its validity. But instead of directly confronting it with what seems to be the true analysis of the phenomenon of exchange, I will follow it out a little further, and we shall see that Marx himself introduces a modification into his result (or develops a half-latent implication in it), in such a way as to vitiate the very analysis on which that result is founded, and to lead us, if we work it out, to what I regard as the true solution of the problem.”

Philip Wicksteed (1844–1927) English economist

Page 712.
"The Marxian Theory of Value: Das Kapital: A Criticism" (1884)

Way, Problem, Light, Learning

“Our conceptions of liberty under the law are not narrow and cramped, but broad and tolerant. Our Constitution guarantees civil, political and religious liberty; fully, completely and adequately; and provides that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States'. This is the essence of freedom and toleration solemnly declared in the fundamental law of the land.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Law, Freedom

“There is but one solution of the problem, and it is to obliterate absolutely all color line. Open up to the Negro as to the white man, the political offices of the country, making but one test, that of mental and moral fitness. Throw down at once the barriers which close out the Negro merely on account of his color from hotel, theater, and railway carriage. Meet your Negro brother as your equal at banquets and in social gatherings. Give him, in one word, and in full meaning of the terms, equal rights and equal privileges, political, civil, and social. I know no color line, I will acknowledge none. The time is not distant when Americans and Christians will wonder that there ever was a race prejudice.”

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

[McClarey, Donald R, Father John Ireland and the Fifth Minnesota, The American Catholic, 2012-08-23, https://the-american-catholic.com/2012/08/23/father-john-ireland-and-the-fifth-minnesota/, 2018-02-04] [Source for quote doesn't list primary source., February 2018]

Color, Problem, Distant, Time

“In examining any dictatorship, there are two good tests. Firstly, what is the relation between the rulers and the proletariat or common people? Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? Do they even identify their interests with those of ordinary citizens? The truth seems to be that, no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Secondly, have the proletariat any effective say in what the rulers do? In the proletarian dictatorships I am familiar with, ordinary people enjoy little or no control over their Government or over their own lives and futures.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 162
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

People, Truth, Sleep, Future

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

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

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

Education, Behavior, Intelligence, Motivation

“Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, — this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, — this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 38 The Victory

Life, Death, Way, Feeling

“In developing his theory of gravitation, Newton assigned to every material body another property which is called its gravitational mass. Gravitational mass determines the force exerted by the body on other bodies, and so its function appears to be quite distinct from that of inertial mass. Nevertheless, the two are found to be identical in magnitude. Newton made experiments to verify this remarkable equality by swinging a pendulum with a bob which could be made with different materials. The period of the swing depended on the ratio of the inertial and gravitational masses of the pendulum, but in all cases it was found to be the same… In 1890 Eötvös made a much more refined test with the aid of a… torsion balance. Repeated experiments showed that inertial mass and gravitational mass were equal to within one part in 100 million. Einstein suggested that this was because inertia and gravitation are identical.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

p, 125
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Appearance, Parting, Dependency

“It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, World, Peace, Democracy

“We were brought up watching opening batsmen score nine before lunch. If Geoffrey Boycott flashed at a ball outside off stump in the first over of a Test match, questions were asked in Parliament. If he flashed at two, the ravens abandoned the Tower of London.”

Geoff Boycott (1940) cricket player of England

Brian Viner in the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/its-cricket-geoff-but-not-as-we-know-it-503579.html, 2005.

Question

“When birth control pills were available in Europe but not in the United States, American women created an uproar about how the unwillingness to make the pill available showed a contempt for the lives of women… When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released birth control pills with high dosages of hormones that were later found to be unnecessarily high, they were attacked for not caring about women enough to do the necessary tests.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 195.

Women, Food, Birth

“THE MOMENT OF CHOICE
A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.”

Stephen R. Covey book First Things First

Source: First Things First (1994), p. 169

Truth

“Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"Beasts Bounding Through Time" (1986)

Dogs, Light, Painting, Madness

“And that brings me to the other big lesson that I want to share with you today. It’s a lesson about how to get through those struggles, and that is, instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. Now, I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives. Maybe someone in your family lost a job or struggled with drugs or alcohol or an illness. Maybe you’ve lost someone you love […]. […] So, yes, maybe you’ve been tested a lot more and a lot earlier in life than many other young people. Maybe you have more scars than they do. Maybe you have days when you feel more tired than someone your age should ever really feel. But, graduates, tonight, I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived. And as painful as they are, those holes we all have in our hearts are what truly connect us to each other. They are the spaces we can make for other people’s sorrow and pain, as well as their joy and their love so that eventually, instead of feeling empty, our hearts feel even bigger and fuller. So it’s okay to feel the sadness and the grief that comes with those losses. But instead of letting those feelings defeat you, let them motivate you. Let them serve as fuel for your journey.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep graduates (2015)

Love, Life, Pain, People

“Whatever I intend to do, I shall test it first on My own family.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, p. 28
The Life of Oyasama

Family

“Good morning. This coming week I will be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of Congress. We have some business to attend to called the budget of the United States. The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other – $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan I submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning? Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare.”

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

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Money, Children, Health, Books

“These false answers — such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small — are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)

God, Question, Bird, Animals

“My favorite athletes of any Olympics are always the African distance runners. You never have to drug test an African distance runner.
"Are you on drugs?"
"No, I'm looking for food."
And I'm sure in Kenya they have a chicken that can run a sub 2-hour marathon…. One of my favorite runners of all time was Abebe Bikila. He was an Ethiopian distance runner and he won the Rome Olympics [marathon] running barefoot. He was then sponsored by Adidas. He ran the next Olympics, he carried the fuckin' shoes. No performance enhancement there.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Food, Shoe, Time

“There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.”

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) English philosopher

Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (1982) p. 133.

Success

“The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.”

John Stossel (1947) American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist

Money, People, School, Parent

“The planet is fine. The people are [bleeped out]. Because everyone is trying to save the planet. The planet doesn’t need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish. And that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live. They don't care about the planet in theory. They just care about having a comfortable place. And these people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild, they put nature to the test and they get what's coming to them. That's what I say. That's what's happening, and I can't wait for the sea levels to rise. I can't wait for some of these cities to disappear. There are places that are going to go away. The map is going to change and that's because -- people think nature is outside of them. They don't take into them the idea that we are part of it. They say, "oh, we're going for a nature walk. We're going to the country because we like nature." Nature is in here. [points to chest] And if you're in tune with it, like the Indians, the Hopis, especially, the balance of life, the balance, the harmony of nature, if you understand that, you don't overbuild. You don’t do all this moron stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The View, 24 October 2007 http://newsbusters.org/blogs/justin-mccarthy/2007/10/24/george-carlins-view-wildfire-victims-get-whats-coming-them Interviews, Television Appearances

Life, People, Idea, Understanding

“Excuse me pal! This is IELTS; you understand? This is International English Language Testing System…not a Bihar Board exam where candidates are accompanied by their friends, neighbours and relatives until they finish writing the test.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Understanding

“The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be in the arrangement of your chromosomes.”

Bella Abzug (1920–1998) American politician

Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington, Saturday Review Press (1972), p. 80.

“A shaping stone, to make us; a testing ground to prove our worth; and a punishment for the sin.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Aiel on the Three Fold Land
(15 November 1990)

“Interspecies differences may lead to concluding that substances that are innocuous or beneficial in humans are harmful, and that substances that have insidious effects on humans are harmless. For example, penicillin is extremely poisonous to guinea pigs. Had penicillin been subjected to the routine animal tests, as new drugs presently are, it would never have been tried on humans.”

Deborah Mayo American philosopher

Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, p. 351

Animals

“In recent years there has been increased interest in the effects of internal communication on decision processes. A number of hypotheses relating the bias in information to the final decision have been proposed. In this paper we discuss two laboratory experiments which were designed to test two such hypotheses. The first experiment tests the hypothesis that cost and sales estimations are made with the implicit assumption that a biased pay-off structure exists. The second experiment tests explicitly the effects of biased and unbiased pay-off structures on estimation within an organization. An analysis of the data for the two experiments is made and some implications for further research are drawn from the results.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

Richard Cyert, James G. March, William H. Starbuck. (1961) "Two experiments on bias and conflict in organisational estimation," Management Science, 254–64; Abstract

Communication, Decision

“The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress.”

Boris Sidis The Source and Aim of Human Progress

The Source and Aim of Human Progress (1919)

Truth, Soul, Spring, Sense

“There is no other science where judgements are tested in blood and answered in the servitude of the defeated, where the acknowledged authority is the leader who has won or who instills confidence that he can win.”

Bernard Brodie (1910–1978) American nuclear strategist

As quoted in "Military air power : the CADRE digest of air power opinions and thoughts", compiled by Charles M. Westenhoff

Confidence, Science

“Business is the real test of the moral life.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 17.

Life, Business

“A thoughtful historian tells us that, between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, Italy produced three great men. As the first of these, he names Machiavelli, who he says, "taught the world to understand political despotism and to hate it"; as the second, he names Sarpi, who "taught the world after what manner the Holy Spirit guides the Councils of the Church"; and as the third, Galileo, who "taught the world what dogmatic theology is worth when it can be tested by science."”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 3

Men, Hate, Age, World

“As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There’s nothing special about that. It’s not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems—that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 3, “The Utility of Dreaming” (p. 119).
Jack Glass (2012)

Fear, Dreams, Feeling, Problem

“One type of medical research involves ascertaining whether certain pathological conditions in humans can be alleviated or cured by certain drugs. Animals are used as "models" upon which to test these treatments. To do this it is necessary for the animal subject to have the condition in question, and in order to bring this about healthy animals are made sick. … It turns out, however, that the conditions artificially induced have little in common with the naturally occurring diseases in animals (when these exist) and much less in common with the diseases in man.”

Deborah Mayo American philosopher

Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, pp. 343-344

Disease, Question, Nature, Animals

“As Uchimaru sees things, an engineer who doesn't think TQM applies to technical activities must not understand either engineering or TQM or both. TQM is the application of the scientific method to business (pick an important problem, get the facts, analyze the facts, find the underlying truth, plan a method of improvement based on the underlying truth, systematically test it to verify that it works, standardize the new method, and then the cycle around again)”

Shoji Shiba (1930) Japanese academic

Shōji Shiba, New American TQM. Productivity press, 1993. p. 463
Shiba talks about Kiyoshi Uchimaru, who was president of NEC's main microchip design subsidiary in the 1980s.

Truth, Understanding, Business, Problem

“Hunter was picked as a promising electronics technician because he aced the Air Force radio-tech exam. Hunter shrugged off the the triumph. Tests were easy. You didn't have to know about radio and electronics; you just needed to be savvy in answering multiple-choice questions. He scored so high, the military thought he was the second coming of Marconi.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 2, Square Peg, Round Hole, p. 23

Question

“What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

Conclusion The Renaissance http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-1.html (1873)

“Models of management sometimes come from task and function analyses of management jobs. Someone studies what managers do, or what duties and responsibilities they are expected to perform, and then develops a model or image of what competent management is (Mintzberg, 1973). Typically, task and function analyses result in detailed descriptions of what activities must be performed in the job. Often these are not arrayed in any order of importance or relevance to the particular job or to the desired output from someone performing the job. Such models have been tested, in that systematic research is conducted to determine if the dentified activities are part of the job. Unfortunately, models based on task or function analysis focus on the job and do not address the person in the job. In doing so, the models include many specific and detailed descriptions of activities, but no mention is made of the characteristics that enable or increase the likelihood of a person performing those activities. These models do not establish a casual link between characteristics of people and performance in a job.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Source: Competent manager (1982), p. 7-8.

People, Study, Parting, Personality

“Some one, I think it was Isaac Disraeli, said that he who did not make himself acquainted with the best thoughts of the greatest writers would one day be mortified to observe that his best thoughts are their indifferent ones, and it is from the great books that have stood the test of time that we shall get, not only the most lasting pleasure, but a standard by which to measure our own thoughts, the thoughts of others, and the excellence of the literature of our own day.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

Pleasure, Books, Literature, Thinking

“Business firms, in which controlled cooperation takes place, are the first important implication of costly transactions. The laissez-faire filtering process, using the profit test, selects some of these business organizations for survival and rejects others.”

Harold Demsetz (1930–2019) American economist

Source: Economic, Political, and Legal Dimensions of Competition. 1980, p. 25

Business

“At the first test I really started to go through a couple of names and I like the name Liz and Luscious Liz fits quite well, I think. It’s an attractive car, it’s quick and successful. But the main attribute naturally should be that she’s bloody quick.”

Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1

http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2010/3/10504.html Interview, March 11, 2010.
About naming the RB6.
Sourced quotes

Cars, Nature, Thinking, Success

“History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction set by liberty and the author of liberty. When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength — tested, but not weary — we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

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

2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

World, Justice, History, Freedom

“In biology the Cartesian view of living organisms as machines, constructed from separate parts, still provides the dominant conceptual framework. Although Descartes' simple mechanistic biology could not be carried very far and had to be modified considerably during the subsequent three hundred years, the belief that all aspects of living organisms can be understood by reducing them to their smallest constituents, and by studying the mechanisms through which these interact, lies at the very basis of most contemporary biological thinking. This passage from a current textbook on modern biology is a clear expression of the reductionist credo: 'One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. Ultimately, molecular biologists will attempt to subject their understanding of cell structure and function to this sort of test by trying to synthesize a cell.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), Ch. 4. The Mechanistic View of Life.

Understanding, Thinking, Study, Parting

“The proletariat thus shared its dictatorship with nobody. As to the question of the "majority", this never troubled Lenin much. In an article "Constitutional Illusions" (Aug. 1917; Works, vol. 25, p. 201) he wrote: "in time of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the ‘ will of the majority’ – you must prove to be stronger at the decisive moment and at the decisive place; you must win … We have seen innumerable examples of the better organized, more politically conscious and better armed minority forcing its will upon the majority and defeating it." (pg. 503) Trotsky, however, answers questions [in The Defence of Terrorism] that Lenin evaded or ignored. "Where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action." Trotsky replies: "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open character; and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S. R. s [Socialist Republics] … and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us" (p. 101). This is one of the most enlightening theoretical formulations of Bolshevism, from which it appears that the "rightness" of a historical movement or a state is to be judged by whether its use of violence is successful. Noske did not succeed in crushing the German Communists, but Hitler did; it would thus follow from Trotsky’ s rule that Hitler "expressed the interests of historical development". Stalin liquidated the Trotskyists in Russia, and they disappeared – so evidently Stalin, and not Trotsky, stood for historical progress.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 510
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Men, War, Idea, Question

“Test cricket is for batsmen, not bowlers. Bowlers are like slaves," Kapil Dev.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

Quoted in Profile: Kapil Dev, 20 December 2013, Sify.com http://www.sify.com/sports/Profile-Kapil-Dev-imagegallery-2-Cricket-ji3aMUgfjij.html?post_ad=1,

“History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 432 (1971).

Women, Men, History, Reality

“As I have noted, I find a thoughtful, analytical criticism most helpful. I do not think any judge can address a vast array of cases and issues without testing and re-testing his or her reasoning and opinions in the crucible of debate. However, since we are quite limited in public debate about matters that may come before the court, such debate must, for the most part, occur intramurally, thus placing a premium on outside scholarship.”

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

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

Thinking, Help, Parting

“So I do the test, and we do this scene, and it's the scene at the end where I throw dishes, and so I threw some dishes… and 'Cut!'… And I look around, and there's blood everywhere, because I broke a plate or something, and they're all checking me — 'Oh my God, she cut herself' — and couldn't find any cut, and then I look, and I realise. I see Al's hand is bleeding. And I cut Al Pacino, in my screen test. I think then he liked me. I think that was actually the turning point.”

Michelle Pfeiffer (1958) American actress

On auditioning for Scarface, from Inside the Actors Studio (2007) http://uk.youtube.com/user/pfeifferpfan2

God, Thinking

“We all get stuck in our belief systems, however sensible we think they are. To me, the New Age community is particularly guilty of not testing or challenging what it claims.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Age, Communication, Thinking

“Sigmund Freud would have been a wonderful witness here. He would have explained the use of derivatives as denial and rationalization—the pretense that we are doing one thing when we really mean to do something else; the relationship between the banker and its client as one of ambivalence and reliance on the father figure; the use of accounting conventions as repression and the absence of reality testing; the work environment as the pleasure/pain principle—current pleasure for future damage, let someone else pick up the pieces; leveraging and doubling our bets as counter-phobic behavior; termination therapy as what happens when the CFO and Treasurer get caught; and, of course, transference—how the trader seeks to shift responsibility to his or her superior when the string runs out.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. http://3197d6d14b5f19f2f440-5e13d29c4c016cf96cbbfd197c579b45.r81.cf1.rackcdn.com/collection/papers/1990/1994_0623_RotbergTestimony.pdf, 23 June 1994

Pain, Pleasure, Behavior, Reality

“The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

12
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

“Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U. S. is now 45 percent socialist.”

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

Article "We Have Socialism, Q.E.D." http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/11-25_Friedman_MGR.php?uid=2075 in The New York Times (31 December 1989)

“It is a lonely and arduous excursion, a sufficient test of courage and sincerity: for most men prefer to dwell in comfortable ignorance upon the lower slopes, and there to make of their obvious characteristics a drapery which shall veil the naked truth.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Source: Practical Mysticism (1914), Chapter V, Self Adjustment, p. 82

Men, Truth, Courage, Sincerity

“We need to re-triple efforts for the defenseless unborn child and for their mothers, equally. They are co-victims. This movement has always been about compassion, empathy, and it has not changed. It has only gotten stronger. It has been tested in fire repeatedly during the Clinton administration and Obama especially. This is not a time to rest – just the opposite.”

Chris Smith (1953) New Jersey politician from the United States

Rep. Chris Smith: ‘Planned Parenthood is Child Abuse Incorporated’ https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/rep.-chris-smith-pro-life-movement-has-huge-opportunity-under-trump-planned (January 23, 2017)

Effort, Change, Time

“We say to Mom that you tell us the wrong name, and we'll bring that guy in and we'll do a blood test and that's not Dad, you lose your welfare benefits. You lose your welfare benefits… Not till you tell us another name, but till we find out who Dad is, we establish it.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania event, , quoted in * 2012-03-18
Rick Santorum To Single Mothers: Government Paternity Tests Or No Welfare
Jason
Cherkis
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/rick-santorum-single-mothers-unwed-moms_n_1333302.html

Guy, Moms

“Unfortunately… the ADA language was designed by experts, and it shows all the non-humane features you can expect from them. It is… a typical Computer Science hacking job—do not try and understand what you are doing, just get it running. As a result of this poor psychological design… although a government contract may specify the programming be in ADA, probably over 90% will be done in FORTRAN, debugged, tested, and then painfully, by hand, be converted to a poor ADA program, with a high probability of errors!”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Error, Understanding, Science

“I always felt that Uncle Remus should be played by a living person, as should also the young boy to whom Harris' old Negro philosopher relates his vivid stories of the Briar Patch. Several tests in previous pictures, especially in The Three Caballeros, were encouraging in the way living action and animation could be dovetailed. Finally, months ago, we 'took our foot in hand,' in the words of Uncle Remus, and jumped into our most venturesome but also more pleasurable undertaking.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in "The Movie: Background". Song of the South.net. Retrieved 2007-01-18.

Pleasure, Way, Boy, Animals

““Part of the test,” said Sillain, “is seeing how well you obey orders.”
“Then I fail,” said John Paul.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 33
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy

Parting

“I personally regret the shift in literary study from reading primary texts to reading critical and theoretical texts. The major problem today among students is that they simply have not read enough literature. Consequently they do not have the necessary background to take a critical attitude towards literary theory. One needs to test every abstraction against experience.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Interview with Robert McPhillips http://www.danagioia.net/about/mcphillips.htm (December 1991), published in Verse (Summer 1992) Interviews

Literature, Problem, Study, Reading

“Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Life, Pain, Fear, Disease

“Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

"A Suave Philosophy," in Daily Express, Dublin (6 February 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-192-83353-7], p. 67

Smile, Business

“The heavenly bodies are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not by the ear); a music which… sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time. It is therefore, no longer surprising that man, in imitation of his creator, has at last discovered the art of figured song, which was unknown to the ancients. Man wanted to reproduce the continuity of cosmic time… to obtain a sample test of the delight of the Divine Creator in His works, and to partake of his joy by making music in the imitation of God.”

Johannes Kepler book Harmonices Mundi

Book V, Ch. 7 as quoted in Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (1959)
Harmonices Mundi (1618)

God, Art, Music, Time

“Whether in number theory, or space-time cosmology, Gödel’s method was to advance the formalization of the system under consideration and then test it to destruction upon the ‘strange loops’ it generated (paradoxes of self-reference and time-travel). In each case, the system was shown to permit cases that it could not consistently absorb, opening it to an interminable process of revision, or technical improvement. It thus defined dynamic intelligence, or the logic of evolutionary imperfection, with an adequacy that was both sufficient and necessarily inconclusive. What it did not do was trash the very possibility of arithmetic, mathematical logic, or cosmic history — except insofar as these were falsely identified with idols of finality or closure.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013)

Travel, History, Intelligence, Mathematics

“Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Letter to the New York Herald Tribune (29 November 1947)

Health, Reading, Loyalty

“In its present state of development psychology must be thought of as a young science. There is only one field in which it is relatively well established and in which it has advanced steadily: this is the psychology of sensation and perception. The scientific character of this field is fully recognized. Its findings are based almost entirely on experimental evidence, and even when its theories are in conflict one feels that as far as method is concerned it stands on relatively firm ground. The situation is different with the psychology of will, of needs, and of personality despite the fact that these fields have always attracted popular interest. As recently as fifteen years ago it was assumed that they, by their very nature, were not amenable to scientific methods. The little experimental work that had been done seemed too artificial and abstract to give an insight into the real processes. It was generally accepted that experimental investigations of these elusive and highly complicated processes were intrinsically impossible, at least in so far as human beings are concerned. Thus in Europe these problems were treated in a half-literary, half-philosophical way, and in America the tendency was to study individual differences by means of tests.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 3.

Way, Feeling, Nature, Problem

“When any good attitude or concept or system worked well, we hung onto it. We preserved representative democracy, intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many. Modern finance was designed in the 17th century. Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century. The idea of progress is 19th century. And yet, all of those things are part of our mental furniture today, because when the answer to a question -- a solution to a problem -- suits us, we kind of institutionalize it, so that it won't change even when we do. The business of questioning, itself, has been institutionalized like that, in the kind of place that Jodrell Bank telescope belongs to: a university.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are

Democracy, Intelligence, Idea, Question

“General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to desire tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Cited in Modgil, Sohan, and Celia Modgil, eds. Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy. Vol. 4. Routledge, 1987.
Other works

Life, Men, Feeling, Idea

“The present is a time of testing, we believe, to many of the Lord's people. Have we in the past been active merely because we hoped for our glorious change in A. D. 1914, or have we been active because of love and loyalty to the Lord and his message and the brethren!”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

The Watch Tower, reprints (March 1, 1915) p. 5649.

Love, People, Hope, Change

“It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions. For example, because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice. NASA officials limited our surface working time to 2 and 3/4 hours on that first surface exploration to assure that we would not expire of hyperthermia.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

Hostility, Water, Time, Perfection

“This all came about through the discovery of a single, isolated case of mad cow disease in one Alberta cow on May 20th. The farmer — I think he was a Louisiana fish farmer who knew nothing about cattle ranching. I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shovelled and shut up, but he didn’t do that. Instead he took it to an abattoir and it was discovered after testing in both Winnipeg and the U. K. that this older cow had mad cow disease.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: Ralph Klein’s most memorable quotes http://globalnews.ca/news/439807/ralph-klein-was-a-sound-bite-gold-mine/ Source: As quoted in "Welcome to Ralph's World: 10 of Ralph Klein's most colourful quotes" http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/welcome-to-ralph-s-world-10-of-ralph-klein-s-most-colourful-quotes-1.1216791, CTV News

Disease, Thinking, Fish, Madness

“Newton's own motto, "hypotheses non fingo" was, in a sense, disregarded by Newton himself: he rejected hypotheses only where they violated his own "regula philosophandi", that is to say, his principle of their strict parsimony. In terms of present-day methodology, we reject hypotheses as scientifically meaningless if they are incapable even of indirect test; and we reject them as superfluous or as implausible if they are too complex and artificial to conform with well established canons of inductive probability. But freedom of scientific theorizing must be preserved wherever the conditions of meaningfulness and of economy appear to be satisfied.”

Arthur Beer (1900–1980) German astronomer

Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1955) Introduction to Vol.1 https://ia600304.us.archive.org/35/items/VistasInAstronomy-Volume1/Beer-VistasInAstronomyVolume1.pdf

Sense, Freedom, Appearance

“The two men walked on and stopped eight feet in front of him and faced him head-on. Reacher flexed his fingers by his side, to test how cold they were. Eight feet was an interesting choice of distance. It meant they were going to talk before they tangled. He flexed his toes and ran some muscle tension up through his calves, his thighs, his back, his shoulders. Moved his head side to side and then back a little, to loosen his neck. He breathed in through his nose. The wind was on his back. The guy on the left took his hands out of his pockets. No gloves. And either he had bad arthritis or he was holding rolls of quarters in both palms.”

Lee Child book Without Fail

Without Fail, Ch. 1 (2002).

Men, Guy

“Test this out on yourself. Imagine that for a month you have neither had your garbage picked up nor an opportunity to read about new anthropological discoveries. Which would you pay more money to remedy? A society that functions effectively adjusts the pay until the supply matches the need. Failure to make these adjustments not only leaves streets filled with garbage, but also leaves unemployment lines filled with anthropologists.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 211.

Money, Imagination, Failure, Reading

“In most cases the favorable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Business, Success

“Robinson (1952) pointed out some limits to approaching map symbolization and design from a purely artistic viewpoint, as he suggested was the guiding perspective at the time. Maps, like buildings that are designed primarily for artistic impact, are often not functional… Robinson (1952) argued that treating maps as art can lead to "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. He saw only two alternatives: either standardize everything so that no confusion can result about the meaning of symbols, or study and analyze characteristics of perception as they apply to maps so that symbolization and design decisions can be based on "objective" rules… Robinson's dissertation, then, signaled the beginning of a more objective approach to map symbolization and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives, an approach that followed the positivist model of physical science. In his dissertation, Robinson cited several aspects of cartographic method for which he felt more objective guidelines were required (e. g., lettering, color, and map design). He also suggested that this objective look at cartographic methods should begin by considering the limitations of human perception. One goal he proposed was identification of the "least practical differences" in map symbols”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

e.g., the smallest difference in lettering size that would be noticeable to most readers
Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 2-3

Art, Color, Decision, Study

“If I offended anyone, particularly the wonderful women in my life, I apologize. But if I have helped elevate the discussion on the serious issues of sexual assault, as opposed to personal indiscretions, to a new level…I make no apologies. Suggesting the admitted conduct of Senator Al Franken and the alleged conduct of Judge Roy Moore are on the same level trivializes the serious subject at hand.
There are Democrats out there who are saying neither one of them pass the purity test to sit in the United States Senate. And that is sad.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-18-2017

Life, Women, Sadness, Help

“The usefulness of observation and measurement in testing economic theories arises because the theorems of economics are supposed to relate to the actual world… Any economic theorem rigorously deduced from given postulates may be regarded as a hypothesis about the actual world which xperience may show to be false.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 12

World, Falseness

“["Do you see a tie in between being a vegetarian and helping the environment?"] All of our cleaning products, lotions, shampoos, and toothpaste are organic and non-chemical, non-animal tested. You don’t have to be a vegetarian to be against animal testing, but it goes hand in hand. You know the rainforest that’s cut down or the land that’s cleared for cattle and factory farm animals, the destruction of the rain forest specifically for beef cattle is mind boggling to the both of us that they would destroy a very precious eco system just so cows have a place to eat grass. The people in South America don’t even really get to eat that beef but the land is being destroyed for it, and definitely the methane that’s produced from the cows and pigs. It’s definitely contributing to global warming. It’s hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that their cheeseburger is making global warming worse. I think it’s an important message for people to get, but it’s hard for people to put the two together and make the connection.”

Susie Feldman (1982) American actress

"Watch “The Two Coreys” this Sunday", interview with PETA (27 July 2007) https://www.peta.org/blog/watch-two-coreys-sunday/.

People, Thinking, Grass, Help

“For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack”

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

there are always sufficiently gullible patients
Foreword to Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations by John Diamond, Vintage, 2001.
Forewords

Parting, Dependency

“Consistency of the person's strategic preference across tests (and subject matters) is curiously high.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies, Teaching Strategies, and Conceptual or Learning Style (1988), p. 85. as cited in: Colin A. Hardy, Michael Mawer (1999) Learning and Teaching in Physical Education. p. 62.

Personality

“If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. xxix

Life, Health, Disease, Idea

“Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift is more Irish than Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

"Irishness", in New Statesman, January 17, 1959
Written under the pseudonym Donat O'Donnell.

Birth, Question

“In matters of national security emotion is no substitute for intelligence, nor rigidity for prudence. To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man — and also a nation.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Radio address (11 April 1955); as quoted in The World's Great Speeches (1999) edited by Lewis Copeland, Lawrence W. Lamm, and Stephen J. McKenna

Intelligence

“The selecting of men is one of the important functions in business and yet one that has not received much scientific attention. I feel sure that the time is ripe for action for two reasons. The psychologists have during the past few years made distinct advance in Mental Tests. My proposal is this: You get from your Class A members data as to their methods of selecting men. Any statements as to actual experience and as to principles or methods will be very valuable. I would make a study of these data and would have some of the men from our School of Commerce go over them with me. We would try to criticize them constructively. Perhaps we could make some suggestions that would be worth while. We would try to indicate the good points used and thus be of assistance to all members of the organization.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: Influencing men in business, 1911, p. 398 ; cited in: Edmund C. Lynch. "Walter Dill Scott: Pioneer Industrial Psychologist," The Business History Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1968), pp. 149-170

Men, School, Feeling, Business

“Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Baseball Was Very, Very Good to Him," The New York Times (2000-10-29)

“I never, ever cheated [in medical school]. I don't condone cheating. But I would sometimes spread misinformation. This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important. We spread the rumor that we knew what was on the test and it was definitely going to be all about the liver. We tried to trick all of our competing students into over-studying for the liver.
"So, that's my advice," he concluded. "Misinformation works."”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

The Truthiness of Rand Paul
Jill Lawrence
2013-10-17
National Journal
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-truthiness-of-rand-paul-20131017
2013-10-21
2010s

School, Study, Cheating

“He measured all his fellow workers by the test of professionalism, and a professional is a man who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

About Humphrey Bogart
Six Men (1977)

Feeling

“I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing — to be sharp, yet open.”

Bernd Heinrich (1940) American ornithologist

Wondering how golden-crowned kinglets, which eat insects from open branches, survive the Maine winters, in "December 11 : Wind", p. 150
A Year in the Maine Woods (1995)

Sense, Time

“I count my time working for Dortch Oldham as one of the most important formative experiences of my life… There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face. Mr. Oldham taught legions of young people to communicate quickly, clearly and with passion, a lesson that has served me well in my life since then.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2009-02-27
Dortch Oldham dies at 89
E. Thomas
Wood
Nashville Post
http://nashvillepost.com/news/2009/2/27/dortch_oldham_dies_at_89
2009

Life, People, Communication, Passion

“As artificial intelligence continues to evolve into superintelligence, King Solomon's challenge will supersede the Turing test.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Intelligence

“…when the test results came back, everything went silent. I don't know if it was from pure astonishment or the overwhelming gratitude of finally having an answer, but a lifetime of words all disappeared except for one. Epilepsy.”

DeBarra Mayo (1953) American martial artist

Living with Epilepsy, Stayhealthy.com, Nov. 9, 1999

Gratitude

“The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 227

School, Knowledge

“I never enjoyed life in my twenties, not one minute of it. It was a test of endurance that I'm surprised I survived. Professionally, of course, I was doing very well but personally it couldn't have been worse or more difficult for me if I'd been living in a mud hut in Leeds.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from an interview with Q magazine (1995)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Life, Personality

“Bohr's investigation had typified what had become a standard procedure in problems of theoretical physics. The first step was to discover the mathematical laws governing certain groups of phenomena; the second was to devise hypothetical models or pictures to interpret these laws in terms of motion or mechanism; the third was to examine in what way these models would behave in other respects, and this would lead to prediction of other phenomena-predictions which might or might not be confirmed when put to the test of experiment. For instance, Newton had explained the phenomena of gravitation in terms of a force of gravitation; a later age had seen the luminiferous ether introduced to explain the propagation of light and, subsequently, the general phenomena of electricity and magnetism; finally Bohr had introduced electronic jumps in an attempt to explain atomic spectra. In each case the models had fulfilled their primary purpose, but had failed to predict further phenomena with accuracy.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Age, Law, Way, Mathematics

“Musically I try to connect a common bridge between such exhilarating feelings as performing at the Acropolis, to the emotions each and every one of us feel everyday. In the end, a good melody will always stand the test of time.”

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

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

Music, Feeling, Time

“One student told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered, and she assumed that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handled all of women’s sexual healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.”

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

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Women, Health, Birth

“Early in my professional life, I found that many areas of economics attracted me. I started working and publishing in price theory by 1938. In 1946, I published an early work on linear programming (The Cost of Subsistence) which solved the problem only approximately; George Dantzig soon presented the exact solution. In the 1940s, I began empirical work on price theory, starting with a test of the kinked oligopoly demand curve theory of rigid prices.”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"George J. Stigler - Biographical," 1982

Life, Problem

“Whoever thought of the No Child Left Behind legislation and its title certainly understands irony because millions of our children our indeed being left behind. This standardized testing is making the job of teachers unnecessarily difficult, limiting the discretion of teachers to teach. School systems are imposing conformity instead of promoting creativity.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Wit and humor combine in presenting serious message http://www.ourmidland.com/story_prep/article_8640fc8b-aed4-53a0-afa2-2076785c4fde.html (6 June 2011) Matrix:Midland Festival

Children, School, Understanding, Teachers

“In physical science and in industrial technique… we have emancipated ourselves… from the savage dependence upon catastrophes for progress… In science and in industry we are radicals—radicals relying on a tested method. But in matters of social organization we retain a large part of the conservatism characteristic of the savage mind…
The 'social reformer' we have always with us, it is true. Or rather most of us are 'social reformers' of some kind… Yet the story of the past in matters of social organization is not a story that we should like to have continued for a thousand and one years. Reform by agitation or class struggle is a jerky way of moving forward, uncomfortable and wasteful of energy. Are we not intelligent enough to devise a steadier and a more certain method of progress? Most certainly, we could not keep social organization what it is even if we wanted to. We are not emerging from the hazards of war into a safe world. On the contrary, the world is a very dangerous place for a society framed as ours is, and I for one am glad of it.
Taking us all together as one people in a group of mighty peoples, our first and foremost concern is to develop some way of carrying on the infinitely complicated processes of modern industry and interchange day by day, despite all tedium and fatigue, and yet to keep ourselves interested in our work and contented with the division of the product…
What is lacking to achieve that end… is not so much good will as it is knowledge—above all, knowledge of human behavior. Our best hope for the future lies in the extension to social organization of the methods that we already employ in our most progressive fields of effort. In science and in industry… we do not wait for catastrophes to force new ways upon us… We rely, and with success, upon quantitative analysis to point the way; and we advance because we are constantly improving and applying such analysis. While I think that the development of social science offers more hope for solving our social problems than any other line of endeavor, I do not claim that these sciences in their present state are very serviceable.
They are immature, speculative, filled with controversies. Nor have we any certain assurance that they will ever grow into robust manhood, no matter what care we lavish upon them…. Those of us who are concerned with the social sciences… are engaged in an uncertain enterprise; perhaps we shall win no great treasures for mankind. But certainly it is our task to work out this lead with all the intelligence and the energy we possess until its richness or sterility be demonstrated.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: "Statistics and Government," 1919, pp. 45, 47, 48-51; as cited in: Arthur F. Burns. " New Facts on Business Cycles http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0386," in: Arthur F. Burns (ed). The Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. Princeton University Press. 1954. p. 61 - 106; p. 63

War, People, World, Hope

Quotes about testing page 9

Quotes about testing
page 9