Quotes about topic
page 2

“The question of the origin of the universe is one of the most exciting topics for a scientist to deal with. It reaches far beyond its purely scientific significance, since it is related to human existence, to mythology, and to religion. Furthermore, it deals with questions are connected with the fundamental structure of matter, with elementrary particles.”

Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908–2002) Austrian-born American theoretical physicist

[Victor F. Weisskopf, American Scientist, The Origin of the Universe: An introduction to recent theoretical developments that are linking cosmology and particle physics, 71, 5, September-October 1983, 473–480, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27852239]

Religion, Question, Universe

“The analysis of engineering systems and the understanding of economic structure have advanced since then, and the time is now more ripe to bring these topics into a potentially fruitful marriage.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. v

Marriage, Understanding, Time

“Great artists are always far-seeing. They easily avoid the big stumbling blocks of fact. They rely on their own simplicity and vision. It is fact-fetichism that has given us those scores and scores of American books on America, the works of sociologists, anthropologists, topical "problem" hunters, working-parties and statisticians, which in the end leave us empty. Henry James succeeds because he rejects information. He was himself the only information he required.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Henry James: Birth of a Hermaphrodite", p. 131
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

Books, Problem

“When I took to Twitter and I urged Hillary to speak clearly on this topic [Islamic terrorism, following the Orlando shootings in June 2016], I got attacked by even LGBT activists for my bigotry, for inspiring hate against Muslims. This is how confused the left is: just a few hours after this news broke, LGBT activists were so allergic to having someone name the belief system that had just produced a massacre in their community that they lashed out against me as a bigot rather than lash out against the people who won't name the belief system that at this moment is doing more than any other on earth to target gays and to force them into hiding.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2 2010s

Hate, People, Communication

“Some of Mr. Gregory’s poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it—they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Town Mouse, Country Mouse”, p. 70
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Fashion, Appearance

“While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power — the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Hunger, War, Children, People

“In scientific information, then, we find that subjects - the themes and topics on which books and articles are written - cluster into fields, each of which can be analysed into its characteristic set of facets of terms.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 11.

Books

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life, Pain, People, Books

“The methods of mathematics are the main topic of the course, not a long list of finished mathematical results with such highly polished proofs that the poor student can only marvel at the results, with no hope of understanding how mathematics is actually created by practicing mathematicians.”

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

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Hope, Mathematics, Understanding

“One can ask two different kinds of questions with regard to the topics of study in psychology as well as in other sciences. One can ask for the phenomenal characteristics of psychological units or events, for example, how many kinds of feelings can be qualitatively differentiated from one another or which characteristics describe an experience of a voluntary act. Aside from this are the questions asking for the why, for the cause and the effect, for the conditional-genetic interrelations. For example, one can ask: Under which conditions has been a decision made and which are the specific psychological effects which follow this decision? The depiction of phenomenal characteristics is usually characterized as “description”, the depiction of causal relationships as “explanation.””

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1927). "Gesetz und experiment in der Psychologie" [Law and experiment in psychology]. in: Symposion, Vol 1, p. 375-421. Translated by and cited in: Kurt Kreppner " On the Generation of Data in the Study of Social Interaction1 http://www.scielo.br/pdf/ptp/v17n2/7871.pdf" in: Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa Vol 17, nr. 2, p. 109. 1920s

Feeling, Question, Decision, Study

“The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical topics serves the same purposes as does the encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional theological topics. Like the rise of large market economies, the increase in literacy, the proliferation of artistic genres, and the insouciant pluralism of contemporary culture, such philosophical superficiality and light-mindedness helps along the disenchantment of the world. It helps make the world’s inhabitants more pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal, more receptive to the appeal of instrumental rationality.”

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) American philosopher

"The priority of democracy to philosophy"

World, Light, Help

“A hot topic of late, expressed most notably in Bernie Siegel's best-selling books, has emphasized the role of positive attitude in combating such serious diseases as cancer. From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), p. 47

Books, Disease, Soul

“At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me — not so much for the sex part, even though that became a very hot topic, the peacemaking-through-sex thing — but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)

Peace, Sex, Time, Fight

“The Former Han dynasty prospered because the rulers favoured virtuous ministers and alienated petty and corrupt officials; the Later Han dynasty declined because the rulers favoured petty and corrupt officials and alienated virtuous ministers. When the Late Emperor was still living, he would often discuss these topics with me, and he expressed grief and regret when we spoke of Huan and Ling.”

Zhuge Liang book Chu Shi Biao

Chu Shi Biao

“The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (2011), Simon & Schuster (U.S.), Ch. 19: "Pixar: Technology Meets Art", ISBN 1-4516-4853-7

Feeling, Strong, Science, Personality

“The guests will arrive soon,” he said, as lightly as if they had been only talking about the weather. “For this tedious chore we call a ‘party.’ We pronounce mingling with uninspired souls ‘charming,’ and talking of unimportant topics ‘delightful.’ Oh, I despise it.”

Tina Connolly American writer

Source: Ironskin (2012), Chapter 10, “The Edge of the Forest” (p. 170)

Soul, Weather

“The core study of geography is the study of places, that is the analysis of the significant differences that distinguish the various areas of the world from each other. Among the differences that are significant to this areal differentiation, one of the more obvious are differences in landforms; one of the least obvious to the eye, but nonetheless important in molding the character of areas, are the differences in their political organization. In pursuing these and other separate topics, geographers "radiate out in diverse directions" "and for various distances, toward the cores of other disciplines."”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

As long as they realise where they are in reference to the central core, they may hope to understand each other purposes.
R. Hartshorne (1950) "The functional approach in political geography," Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 40 (2), p. 95

World, Hope, Understanding, Study

“The topic that I have attempted to explore is the usefulness of these notions of the engineer, about feeds-back, harmonic components and the like, in application to the analogous problems of economic fluctuation and economic regulation.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. v

Problem

“A white woman tipsy at the club, discoursing sexual needs unsatisfied by an overworked and debilitated husband, was a great topic of scandal in the bazaar. It was a man’s world, and a realistic planter or government officer should have been content with beery sodality and the odd session with a geisha or perempuan jahat. But these men had been to decent schools and were romantic. It was the same in Burma, as Orwell reminds us. The French suffered less.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Men, World, School, Suffering

“Having presented all the relevant nanoscale mechanisms, thus laying down a firm background for the readers’ understanding, the author moves to the topic of architectural challenges in Chapter 7. This field is claimed still to be an unsolved problem so the author gives examples of currently used technologies and points out potential architectural solutions such as self-assembly, carbon nanotubes, or quantum systems. That is why it makes the book even more valuable for those who intend to involve nanonetworks in their research.”

Stephen F Bush

Book Reviews, REVIEWER: JAKUB PALIDER, NANOSCALE COMMUNICATION NETWORKS STEPHEN F. BUSH, ARTECH HOUSE, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-003-9, HARDCOVER, 308 PAGES, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2011.

Books, Understanding, Problem

“Summing up, Nanoscale Communication Networks is a demanding but also very interesting book, an ambitious primer. It is definitely a good starting point for further reading. The author guides the reader through all the aspects of nanonetworks, giving in most cases a clear description of his thinking process within transitions between equations. There are also many cross references between chapters and sections which give a broader view of the topic and help to memorize it. One can also find many pictures, diagrams and tables throughout this book in order to systematize the presented knowledge.”

Stephen F Bush

Books, Communication, Knowledge, Thinking

“I'm a student of the movies. I'm a student of all media. This is what I do, and I like to immerse myself in what's current and what's topical. And I find that I'm drawn to those things.”

Ian Ziering (1964) American actor

'Sharknado's' Ian Ziering: 'Maybe This Is My Pulp Fiction Moment' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sharknados-ian-ziering-maybe-is-my-pulp-fiction-moment-584659 (July 12, 2013)

“Psychohistory, like psychoanalysis, is a science in which the researcher's feelings are as much or even more a part of his research equipment than his eyes or his hands. […] Weighing of complex motives can only be accomplished by identification with human actors, the usual suppression of all feeling preached and followed by most "science" simply cripples a psychohistorian as badly as it would cripple a biologist to be forbidden the use of a microscope. The emotional development of a psychohistorian is therefore as much a topic for discussion as his or her intellectual development.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: Foundations of Psychohistory (1982), Ch. 2, p. 100.

Feeling, Motivation, Science, Parting

“Although mathematical notation undoubtedly possesses parsing rules, they are rather loose, sometimes contradictory, and seldom clearly stated. […] The proliferation of programming languages shows no more uniformity than mathematics. Nevertheless, programming languages do bring a different perspective. […] Because of their application to a broad range of topics, their strict grammar, and their strict interpretation, programming languages can provide new insights into mathematical notation.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

Source: Math for the Layman (1999), Ch. 10, §D

Mathematics

“I assert, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance is a true atheism, and will serve to justify all those sentiments, for which Spinoza is so universally infamous. From this topic, I hope at least to reap one advantage, that my adversaries will not have any pretext to render the present doctrine odious by their declamations, when they see that they can be so easily retorted on them.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
G - L

Hope, Thinking, Universe

“Consider your state of mind—your consciousness—before going to sleep. This is extremely important. Make a commitment to spend at least fifteen minutes spiritualizing your consciousness before going to bed. Read something spiritual, listen to spiritual discourse or music, or engage in discussion on a spiritual topic. Push aside the chaos and confusion that were a part of your day, and focus on spiritual reality. In this way, you will prepare yourself for the next six to eight hours of sleep. If you allow yourself to focus spiritually, you will provide less of an opportunity for negative elements to enter your dreams. You can then benefit most from your sleeping state.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 24

Dreams, Music, Way, Reality

“… you don't realize whether or not you completely understand a topic until you are tasked to explain it to someone else. … That really challenges your understanding of a topic.”

Steven Novella (1964) American neurologist, skepticist

SGU, Podcast #170, October 22nd, 2008 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/170 The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Podcast, 2000s

Understanding

“As an engineer by training and practice, and as a manufacturer having upwards of thirty-five years of practical experience in industrial management in many phases, I avail myself with pleasure of this opportunity of meeting this large body of students who are preparing themselves for active work in the world, and of submitting for your consideration some suggestions concerning your future work, especially in the field with which I am most familiar and in which some of you, I feel sure, will find your best opportunities, and which will form the topic of my argument, namely, Industrial Engineering”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Lead paragraph
Industrial Engineering, 1905

Pleasure, World, Feeling, Future

“Varied views were put forward as to the content and priorities of information science, though there was general agreement that its central topics should be information organisation, dissemination and retrieval.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 25.

Science

“Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
2013

People, Law, Democracy, Study

“I don't think we should silence people just because their viewpoints are something we disagree with. There is value in the conversation, and we as a society need to confront these issues. This is an incredibly complex topic, and I'm sure our thinking will continue to evolve.”

Steve Huffman (1983) American businessman

In July 2015 about of banning hate speech in Reddit. As quoted in Open racism and slurs are fine to post on Reddit, says CEO https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/12/racism-slurs-reddit-post-ceo-steve-huffman (12 April 2018) by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian.

People, Thinking, Silence

“HOW TO LEARN ANYTHINGAs far as I can tell these are the techniques used by bright people who want to learn something other than by taking courses in it. […]1. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. But you can't know this exactly, because you don't know exactly how any field is structured until you know all about it.2. READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON IT, especially what you enjoy, since that way you can read more of it and faster.3. GRAB FOR INSIGHTS. Regardless of points others are trying to make, when you recognize an insight that has meaning for you, make it your own […] Its importance is not how central it is, but how clear and interesting and memorable to you. REMEMBER IT. Then go for another.4. TIE INSIGHTS TOGETHER. Soon you will have your own string of insights in a field. […]5. CONCENTRATE ON MAGAZINES, NOT BOOKS. Magazines have far more insights per inch of text, and can be read much faster. But when a book really speaks to you, lavish attention on it.6. FIND YOUR OWN SPECIAL TOPICS, AND PURSUE THEM.7. GO TO CONVENTIONS. For some reason, conventions are a splendid concentrated way to learn things; talking to people helps. […]8. "FIND YOUR MAN." Somewhere in the world is someone who will answer your questions extraordinarily well. If you find him, dog him. […]9. KEEP IMPROVING YOUR QUESTIONS. Probably in your head there are questions that don't seem to line up with what your hearing. Don't assume that you don't understand; keep adjusting the questions till you get an answer that relates to what you wanted.10. YOUR FIELD IS BOUNDED WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE. Just because others group and stereotype things in conventional ways does not mean they are necessarily right. Intellectual subjects are connected every which way; your field is what you think it is. […]”

Ted Nelson (1937) American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist; coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

Dream Machines
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974, rev. 1987)

People, Books, World, Dogs

“We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the abuse of that right.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Platform, Independent League; N.Y. Journal (February 1, 1924)your mom stinks

People, World, Exercises, Personality

“We had many interesting conversations and he introduced me to his young wife. He confided to me that he had married her because she was a fanatical atheist. Atheism was the main topic of their conversations. Such fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion. The truly convinced atheist does not emphasize his atheism. He does not talk about it and is careful to avoid blasphemies.
The man was interested in dreams and each morning he related several of his dreams. They were full of religious symbols. I was cautious not to reveal to him the meaning of his dreams; such off-hand analyses are always dangerous…. The banker did not want to be disturbed in his supposed atheism…. His atheism was a reaction formation established upon an ineradicable religious belief.”

Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) Austrian physician and psychologist

American Journal of Psychotherapy Volume II (1948); this has sometimes been quoted as "Fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion." Stekel repeated the anecdote http://benatlas.com/2010/06/wilhelm-stekel-on-atheism-and-telepathy in his Autobiography (1950). The man was the manager of a large New York bank. Stekel met him on the liner on which he was travelling back to Europe.

Religion, Dreams, Confidence

“That one man can run faster than another is no reason to prevent the latter from entering the race. Indeed, until the race is run, how do we know who can run faster? In comparing the known inequalities among whites to the alleged inequalities between blacks and whites, Wilson illuminates the logical and moral irrelevance of the distinction of the races in considering the principles of republican government. Nevertheless, this topic could not be addressed in the pure light of reason and nature, because public opinion, North or South, would not permit it.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), pp. 228–229

Nature, Light

“The idea of the unconscious mental processes was, in many of its aspects, conceivable around 1700, topical around 1800, and became effective around 1900, thanks to the imaginative efforts of a large number of individuals of varied interests in many lands.”

Lancelot Law Whyte book The Unconscious Before Freud

The Unconscious Before Freud (1967)

Imagination, Idea, Effort

“One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest anti-smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers”

Robert N. Proctor (1954) American historian

Robert N. Proctor, " The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352989/pdf/bmj00571-0040.pdf." BMJ: British Medical Journal 313.7070 (1996): 1450.

World, Support

“After collecting, using, and recommending scores of other Bible versions for about 25 years, I spent hundreds of hours studying the Bible version topic and have been dragged to the conclusion that God preserved His Word for the English-speaking people in the King James Bible (KJB). I have been unable to find any errors in it and trust it, word for word.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 5

God, People, Error, Study

“The purpose of "Engineering Cybernetics" is then to study those parts of the broad science of cybernetics which have direct engineering applications in designing controlled or guided systems. It certainly includes such topics usually treated in books on servomechanisms. But a wider range of topics is only one difference between engineering cybernetics and servomechanisms engineering. A deeper - and thus more important - difference lies in the fact that engineering cybernetics is an engineering science, while servomechanisms engineering is an engineering practice.”

Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) Chinese rocket scientist

Source: Engineering cybernetics, (1954), p. vii

Books, Study, Science, Parting

“A few friends that also drew manga gathered at the pub regardless of the fact did we drink any alcohol, we would talk excitedly about manga. We will get so preoccupied with the topic, that we always miss the last train. Although we all have the feeling, “We’re so old already, why are we still mucking around like this?” But whenever we hear something like “I want to draw this!!”, the passion from everybody, our spirits are refreshed with new enthusiasm. This time I even got Moritaishi Sensei to draw the omake for me. Wah!! (Happy)”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Happiness, Alcohol, Feeling, Drink

“We made for him a great dinner of honor. At this dinner I said to him, for the last time, I thought, "Goodbye, dear friend, topic of my life, now we part." And to myself I said further: Finished. This is your lonesome bed. A lady what they call fat and fifty. You made it personally. From this lonesome bed you will finally fall to a bed not so lonesome, only crowded with a million bones.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"Goodbye and Good Luck" (1959)

Life, Time, Parting, Personality

“Ludwig's book is outstanding. It pulls together a mound of pertinent data, much of it new, into coherent patterns…Throughout the book the reader is offered a wealth of insights and serious questions…Ludwig's development of a Creative Achievement Scale [is] a valued contribution in its own right, allowing researchers a comprehensive objective tool for scoring subjects' degree of achievement… Ludwig has cleared up much of the confusion and opinionated muddleheadedness… that has been attached to the topic and the thinking regarding a relationship between psychopathology and creativity.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

Imagination, Cognition and Personality, review of The Price of Greatness.

Books, Question, Thinking, Wealth

“I claim that jihadis are really motivated neither by religion nor by a Leftist sense of justice, but by resentment, which in no way puts them on the Left, neither “objectively” nor “subjectively.” I simply never wrote that Islamic fundamentalists are in any sense on the Left—the whole point of my writing on this topic is that the “antagonism” between liberal tolerance and ethnic or religious fundamentalism is inherent to the universe of global capitalism: in their very opposition, they are the two faces of the same system. The true Left starts with the insight into this complicity. A good example of how religious fundamentalism is to be located “in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism” is Afghanistan. Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 30 years ago, it was a country with strong secular tradition, up to a strong Communist party which first took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Afghanistan became fundamentalist when it was drawn into global politics”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

first through the Soviet intervention "Disputations: Who Are You Calling Anti-Semitic?" in The New Republic (7 January 2009) http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/disputations-who-are-you-calling-anti-semitic

Religion, Justice, Way, Motivation

“Grove quotes me – and the quotes are things I actually said! That is stunningly rare. … What liberals normally do in response to a principled conservative argument is lie, manufacture quotes, and call conservatives names – as some dissolute drunk did in the New York Post a few days later. The left's logic deficit is a topic I explore thoroughly in my book. Buy it and prepare to have your blood run hot.
Oh, and for the record, Howard Kurtz is wrong about the reason I call him the Liberal Ombudsman for Liberal Media Bias in my book – it was not the "girly-boy" quote. Paradoxically, that is the ONLY time Kurtz has quoted me accurately.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Mentioning comments by journalist Howard Kurtz about his reporting of Coulter calling editors at National Review Online "girly-boys".
2002, Ann Coulter : Left Is 'out to Destroy the Country' (2002)

Lie, Books, Quotes, Boy

“A wonderful range of writing is offered in these and other forms. Stylistically, there are unspoken limits. The delphic or serpentine are not part of the repertoire. No fear could be more foreign to the journal than of ‘the mischief of premature clarification’, against which Fredric Jameson – whose arrival in its pages is a welcome departure from consistency – once warned. The too vehement is likewise at some discount, suspect of ‘rant’. Perhaps the best way of conveying the overall climate would be to say that the paper resists any trace of l’esprit du sérieux, in the Sartrean sense: that is, of the portentous, high-minded, hypocritical. Against all these, its playfulness finds expression on the largest as well as smallest of topics. Emblematic in this collection are the saturnine tones of Edward Luttwak, as a ‘heavy-weight’ contributor. 12 It is enough to think of the contributions of President Havel to the New York Review to understand their antithesis.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Perry Anderson / Quotes / Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)

Fear, Way, Departure, Understanding

“One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 1

Problem, Time, Reading

“You can ask the question about these ancient topics, such as perfect numbers and amicable numbers… and ask, are these good problems… I'd like to give a small amount of evidence… that they are… [S]tudying them helped us develop all of elementary number theory and from elementary number theory we developed the rest of number theory, and also you can argue that from elementary number theory came algebra..”

Carl Pomerance (1944) American mathematician

"Paul Erdős and the Rise of Statistical Thinking in Elementary Number Theory" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cU0g9dI1S8&t=9m40s (July, 2013) Erdős Centennial Conference, Budapest.

Question, Problem, Help

“When I speak of language, I do not only mean poetic or verbal language: I am thinking of the language of mathematics, of physics, et cetera. It is a fascinating topic. Language is an interface between us and the world. Beyond language there is nothing but pure mystical contemplation of the universe.”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 48

World, Mathematics, Thinking, Universe

“Mr. Burke talked in very high terms of Dr. Adam Smith; praised the clearness and depth of his understanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast accession that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from these exertions, and described his heart as being equally good with his head and his manners as peculiarly pleasing. Mr. Smith, he said, told him, after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man, who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke. Volume II (London: G. Cawthorn, 1800), pp. 428-9
Undated

Communication, Literature, Understanding, Learning

“I think it tells the truth and it cuts to the heart of so many profound aspects of human experience unlike many musicals, which cover more frivolous topics.”

Anthony Rapp (1971) American actor

Of the musical Rent One on one with Anthony Rapp on his return to "Rent": Livewire, April 7, 2009 http://www.concertlivewire.com/rentint.htm

Truth, Music, Thinking, Heart

“An earlier paper (Pask, 1976) introduced conversational techniques, some involving a human participant in dialogue with a student, others involving a mechanically or computer implemented 'participant' through which the student 'talks to himself' under restrictions imposed by the device. In either case (human or mechanical monitoring) the subject matter of a conversation is represented in a liberally conceived, but standard, fashion, as a conversational domain consisting in an entailment structure (embodying one or more description schemes and indicating the many ways in which one topic may be known in terms of or derived from others) and behaviour graphs (one for each topic in the domain) that prescribe what may be done to model or explain the topic in question. Within this framework, the conversational techniques secure, or approximate, a standard condition for experiments on learning.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Styles and Strategies of Learning (1976), p. 128: Pask is referring to the article: Pasc, G. (1976). "Conversational techniques in the study and practice of education". In: British Journal of educational Psycholy, Vol 46, p. 12-25.

Way, Fashion, Question, Learning

“Vico claims that the aim of philosophy is the problem of "finding," and he identifies the theory of "finding" with "topical philosophy.” …”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 40

Problem

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Beauty, Way, Nature, Problem

“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

“It is possible to see Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas as complementary. Keynes is about short-run economic fluctuations brought about by erratic variations in the willingness of investors and governments to spend; Schumpeter is about the long-run trajectory driven by the erratic march of technological progress. This complementarity only became clear later, after both men had died, when economic growth became an explicit objective of public policy and topic of systematic analysis. Schumpeter was left frustrated by the younger generation’s affinity for his rival. In any case, the “preliminary volume” never materialized.
The world turns. Today, some sixty years after their deaths, Schumpeter’s star probably outshines Keynes’s. The business cycle has receded in importance, partly because the large industrial economies have sprouted a more stable structure, and partly because the lessons that Keynes taught have been learned by central banks and finance ministries. Instead, long-term economic growth has moved to the top of the political and intellectual agenda, and that was Schumpeter’s topic. As Robert Lucas memorably put it, once you have begun to think about economic growth, it is hard to think about anything else. It is a pity that troubled old Schumpeter did not live to see the triumph of his obsession.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

"Heavy Thinker" (2007)

Death, Men, World, Star

“In all cases, wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we observe in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the same instance, the diversity of choice shows the strength of the argument, because it shows the number and competition of the examples. There is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 27 : Conclusion.

Feeling, History, Intelligence, Business

“Those who always take the same paths, usually see the same objects; it is rare that upon following different routes, one won't discover new topics worthy of our most serious attention. Similarly, various attempts give us a greater amount of knowledge. By trying different keys, we can hope to finally find some that open secure paths, short and easy, leading to the wealth of physics.”

Pierre Polinière (1671–1734) French physicist

Ceux qui passent toujours par les mêmes chemins, voyent ordinairement toujours les mêmes objets; il est rare qu'à force de suivre différentes routes, on ne découvre de nouveaux sujets dignes de nos attentions les plus sérieuses. De même les différentes tentatives nous font avoir un plus grand nombre de connaissances. En essayant donc différentes clefs, on peut espérer d'en rencontrer enfin qui nous ouvriront les passages assurés, courts et faciles pour arriver aux richesses de la Physique.
[Pierre Polinière, Expériences de physique, Charles Moette, 1728, http://books.google.com/books?id=phE5AAAAcAAJ&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=&f=false, vii]

Hope, Knowledge, Wealth

“[In the introduction to his Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Topics, Averroes said] This art has three parts. The first part sets forth the speeches from which dialectical conversation is composed — i. e., its parts, and the parts of its parts on to its simplest components. This part is found in the first treatise on Aristotle's book.
The second part sets forth the topics from which syllogisms are drawn — syllogisms for affirming something or denying it with respect to every kind of problem occurring in this art. This is the next six treatises of Aristotle's book
The third part set forth how The third part sets forth how the questioner ought to question and the answerer answer. It also sets forth how many kinds of questions and answers there are. This is in the eighth treatise of Aristotle's book.”

Averroes (1126–1198) Medieval Arab scholar and philosopher

Averroës, Charles Edwin Butterworth (1977) Averroës' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's "Topics,". p. 92

Books, Art, Question, Problem

“The question of giving workers a sense of belonging, an increased share in the affairs of the industry, has been a topical issue the world over. We gave it official recognition when a specific recommendation in this connection was made in the Second Five-Year Plan.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, P.24.
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

World, Question, Sense

“There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as in other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is surely no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift in the ocean, trapped if a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen.”

Anthony Kenny (1931) British philosopher

The God of the Philosophers (1979), p. 129

God, Idea, Help

“My mind is ever toying with economic ideas and relationships. Great novelists and poets have reported occasional abandonment by their muse. The well runs dry, permanently or on occasion. Mine has been a better luck. As I have written elsewhere, there is a vast inventory of topics and problems floating in the back of my mind. More perhaps than I shall ever have occasion to write up for publication. A result that I notice in statistical mechanics may someday help resolve a problem in finance.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Idea, Problem, Help

“The suspicion has to arrive that if a public conversation about acceleration is beginning, it’s just in time to be too late. The profound institutional crisis that makes the topic ‘hot’ has at its core an implosion of social decision-making capability.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism" https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ (2017)

Decision, Time

“Unlike pure theorists, we shall not assume at the outset that rational behavior exists or that rational behavior constitutes the topic of economic analysis. We shall study economic behavior as we find it. In describing and classifying different reactions, as well as the circumstances that elicit them, we shall raise the question whether and in what sense certain reactions may be called “rational.” After having answered that question and thus defined our terms, we shall study the fundamental problem: Under what conditions do more and under what conditions do less rational forms of behavior occur?”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 16; as cited in: Erik Angner and George Loewenstein. "Behavior economics," in: Philosophy of Economics, (2012), p. 657

Behavior, Question, Problem, Sense

“Kath Two was Survey. Whether or not this made her military was a topic of almost theological complexity.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

“Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different.”

Michael Dummett (1925–2011) British academic and philosopher

On Lewis Carroll's work on election theory; quoted in Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008), p. vii

“The lesson is that the number of patents (produced by Taiwan) is irrelevant. After all, products that are discarded do not need patents. Universities and researchers must adjust their modes of thought. It is not just the sheer quantity of papers published, but whether the topics of such papers would be of help in ensuring the future of Taiwanese society.”

Chen Liang-gee (1956) politician

Chen Liang-gee (2017) cited in " INTERVIEW: Minister says role is to be ‘trailblazer’ for technology http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/04/03/2003667988/3" on Taipei Times, 3 April 2017

Universe, Future, Help

“The liberty of the press has always been, and has justly been, a favourite topic with Englishmen. They have looked at it with jealousy whenever it has been invaded; and though a licenser was put over the press, and was suffered to exist for some years after the coming of William, and after the revolution, yet the reluctant spirit of English liberty called for a repeal of that law; and from that time to this it has not been shackled and limited more than it ought to be.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Case of John Lambert and others (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1016.

Jealousy, Law, Suffering, Time

“The problems of subject search on the Internet are no different in principle: search engines may permit easy location of verbally expressed topics, but we still seek to improve our methods of navigation.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 11; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Search, Problem

“Uninformed strong opinions - and I particularly include religious ones, which for some reason get special treatment - are of course mere clusters of prejudices and no more appropriate than mine, yours or anyone else's are on topics we don't understand - as worthless as my opinions on hockey, Noel Edmonds or rimming.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Understanding, Strong, Hockey

“It was not until my second year as a doctoral student that I began to understand that mathematics was an ever-expanding universe. My thesis advisor at Princeton was Emil Artin, one of the great algebraists of the century. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he offered me no advice in the selection of a thesis topic. I think it was a fluke that I got started at all. But once I did, a whole new world opened up, to which I would devote a vast amount of time and energy for over thirty years.”

O. Timothy O'Meara (1928–2018) American mathematician

[The Idea of a Catholic University: A Personal Perspective, Marquette Law Review, Winter 1995: Symposium on Religiously Affiliated Law Schools, 78, 2, 389–396, http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1579&context=mulr]

World, Mathematics, Understanding, Thinking

“An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we find some women that are also qualified?" And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Second Presidential Debate, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, , quoted in
2012

Women, Men, People, Effort

“I do not sell out my personality. I represent views. I utter opinions. Let us talk about that! That should be the topic, not my personality! It is only a frame. A framework. Which does not deserve either attention, adoration, or love.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Én nem a személyiségemet árulom. Én álláspontokat képviselek. Véleményt mondok. Erről beszéljünk! Ez legyen a téma, ne az én egyéniségem! Az egy váz. Egy keretrendszer. Nem érdemes sem figyelemre, sem rajongásra, sem szeretetre. (Puzsér Róbert: "Én egy őrkutya vagyok"
Szily Nóra interjúja, life.hu, 2012. április 10.)
Quotes from him, Interviews

Love, Personality

“When a cartoonist attempts to be ‘fair and balanced’ and ‘understand all sides,’ they have failed. Too many avoid that altogether and instead become comedians. They take any topic and cast about and ask themselves: “What’s funny in this?” I despise that attitude. Sure, satirical humor is an important element, but not the only element. A good cartoonist need not be funny to be effective. Many of my best cartoons are not funny.”

Ben Garrison American political cartoonist

The “Rogue Cartoonist” Ben Garrison on What it’s Like to be a Political Cartoonist During the Presidential Election http://www.lifeandnews.com/articles/the-rogue-cartoonist-ben-garrison-on-what-its-like-to-be-a-political-cartoonist-during-the-presidential-election/ (September 30, 2016)

Understanding

“It is possible that efforts to contemplate some risk area—say, existential risk—will do more harm than good. One might suppose that thinking about a topic should be entirely harmless, but this is not necessarily so. If one gets a good idea, one will be tempted to share it; and in so doing one might create an information hazard. Still, one likes to believe that, on balance, investigations into existential risks and most other risk areas will tend to reduce rather than increase the risks of their subject matter.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms From Knowledge https://nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf (2011)

Idea, Thinking, Effort

“Not only was there a layer of ice above the atmosphere, the Bible teaches that the earth also had a layer of water UNDER the crust of the earth. The earth’s crust today is about 10-25 miles thick. Many who have studied this topic agree that the earth had huge reservoirs of water maybe ten miles down, when the earth was first created. Psalm 24:1-2, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it UPON the seas, and established it UPON the floods..””

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Was the earth founded on the water? Psalm 136:6 tells us that God “stretched out the earth ABOVE the waters.”
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 46

God, World, Study, Water

“I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

" Of Freedom of Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=OM4eT2epYzwC&q=&quot;Society+can+exist+only+on+the+basis+that+there+is+some+amount+of+polished+lying+and+that+no+one+says+exactly+what+he+thinks&quot;&pg=PA95#v=onepage", lecture given in China (4 March 1933)

Lying, Thinking, Freedom

“It is a huge loss for Wikipedia. She may have been our single biggest contributor on these topics — female authors, women’s history.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation — cited in: Cohen, Noam. (April 18, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz, 37, Wikipedia Editor, Dies After Rock Climbing Fall" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/business/media/adrianne-wadewitz-37-wikipedia-editor-dies-after-rock-climbing-fall.html. The New York Times. About

Women, History, Loss

“The physicians in Celle were fifteen years behind in their practice; they had heard of a new style of practice, but regarded it as a mere chimera. When I ventured to say a word or two, they did not understand me: when I appealed to some great authority, they were ignorant of it: when I spoke from my own practical experience, they looked at me, from head to foot, and said sneeringly, "Well, well; experience will come in time." But when by chance I ventured to make some proposal, they turned round, and wondered where they should find room enough in the churchyards to bury my patients. The great applause with which my Dissertations had been received in all the learned journals, even in England as well as in France, gave me courage, hoping that this circumstance would make some impression on the mind of the public; but it was generally thought I had ill employed my time, and knew little or nothing. Being obliged to frequent society, I was so disgusted with the general tone and the topics of their conversation, that I was almost in despair; at last, some young ladies treated me with more attention.”

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

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Hope, Courage, Understanding, Learning

“Seeing our common-sense conceptual framework for mental phenomena as a theory brings a simple and unifying organization to most of the major topics in the philosophy of mind.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Source: "Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes," 1981, p. 68: About "Why folk Psychology is a theory."

Sense

“No critic, not even a topical analyst, can escape seeing the musical past from a present perspective. But…the common-language approach of the topical-analyst critics permits a separation between present sensibility and the general sensibilities of the late eighteenth century, allowing for an ever-evolving dialogue between the vanished past and the evanescent present.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Reading Mozart's Music", p.43.

Music, Past

“We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of out existence. It’s as if as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap out hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

Thinking

“[An exchange takes place between the pair and the speaker, who asks Skinner to keep on topic but not to withdraw the remark. ]”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

1980s

“Pop culture is filth. It is now completely degenerate. Why do you never hear anyone humming a current pop song any more? Because none of them is hummable, or even worth bothering to remember. What is the main topic on TV sitcoms and "dramedies"? You know what. Why do you stand in the aisle in Blockbuster muttering to yourself: "There isn't a single damn movie in here I want to watch?"”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Because Hollywood produces nothing but crap, crap, crap. Unpleasant Truths: A conservative view of the world today http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire080202.asp, National Review August 2, 2002.

““Stop the life cycle-I want to get off!”
“Life-cycle Concept Considered Harmful.”
“The waterfall model is dead.”
“No, it isn’t, but it should be.”
These statements exemplify the current debate about software life-cycle process models. The topic has recently received a great deal of attention.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: A spiral model of software development and enhancement. (1988), p. 61

Life, Dead

“The structural tools developed by the profession – hierarchical classifications, facets, thesaural relations, topic maps, the predicates used in ontology – will still be of use, provided that they can in each case pass a test of utility.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxvii.

“I was extremely annoyed because I was doing NY1 a favor by rushing to do their interview first in lieu of several other requests. The reporter knew that I was in a hurry and was only there to comment on the State of the Union, but insisted on taking a disrespectful and cheap shot at the end of the interview, because I did not have time to speak off-topic I verbally took the reporter to task and told him off, because I expect a certain level of professionalism and respect, especially when I go out of my way to do that reporter a favor. I doubt that I am the first Member of Congress to tell off a reporter, and I am sure I won’t be the last.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

After an incident with Michael Scotto, in Washington, D.C. (28 January 2014) http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/michael-grimm-michael-scotto-reporter-102785.html. 2010s

Way, Time

“Once the butt of jokes for being the site where visitors could find anything, true or not, Wikipedia in recent years has become a more trusted source of information — certainly for settling bar bets, but even for weighty topics like Ebola.”

Noam Cohen (1999) American journalist

[Noam, Cohen, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/wikipedia-is-emerging-as-trusted-internet-source-for-information-on-ebola-.html, The New York Times, October 26, 2014, Wikipedia Emerges as Trusted Internet Source for Ebola Information, October 29, 2014]

“León Krauze: I am sure that you know about this topic: various leftist governments, especially the populists, are in serious trouble in Latin America. The socialist model in Venezuela has the country near collapse. Argentina, also Brazil, how do you explain that failure?
Bernie Sanders: You are asking me questions…
Krauze: I am sure you're interested in that.
Sanders: I am very interested, but right now I'm running for President of the United States.
Krauze: So you don't have an opinion about the crisis in Venezuela?
Sanders: Of course I have an opinion, but as I said, I'm focused on my campaign.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Interview with Univision's León Krauze, as quoted in "Bernie Hits Bump on Univision: Speechless on Socialism’s Failures" http://newsbusters.org/blogs/latino/edgard-portela/2016/05/26/bernie-hits-bump-univision-speechless-socialisms-failures by Edgard Portela, NewsBusters (26 May 2016) 2010s, 2016

Failure, Question, Country

“[Hemingway] always used to bawl me out for including so much topical stuff. He always claimed that was a great mistake, that in fifty years nobody would understand. He may have been right; it's getting to be true.”

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter

Discussion session with students at Union College, Oct 16 1968, reproduced in John Dos Passos: The Major Nonfictional Prose, ed. Donald Pizer

Understanding

“Exploring maps as representation forges important links between cartography and a variety of cognate fields concerned with this topic in its various facets (including geographical information systems [GIs] and remote sensing, as well as art, cognitive science, sociology, cognitive and environmental psychology, semiotics, and even the history and philosophy of science).”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 1

Art, History, Sense, Science

“After meditating deeply on this topic, it occurred to me that light, upon passing from one medium to another, has to make a choice, whether to follow the path of shortest distance (the straight line) or the path of least time. But why should it prefer time over space? Light cannot travel both paths at once, yet how does it decide to take one path over another? Rather than taking either of these paths per se, light takes the path that offers a real advantage: light takes the path that minimizes its action.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Travel, Light, Time

“For example, Cambridge University established a prize named for an essay competition on the topic: 'The best means of civilizing the subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the light of the Christian religion throughout the eastern world.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Indra's Net

Indra's Net (2014)

World, Religion, Light, Universe

“The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 30.

Death, Books, Hope, Support

“What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? and whence did it come?
You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification.
If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest.”

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

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

Truth, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

from "Cardinal Ratzinger Sees a Media Campaign Against Church," Zenit.org, December 3, 2002
2002

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

Popularity of Authorship (1824)

Business, Time, Falseness

“The more I deepen the topic of regions (I'm in Milan for this reason), the more I am dismayed by having to write about it. It doesn't take much to understand that what these Lombard regionalists are pursuing, knowingly or unknowingly, is a Cisalpine secessionist plan. And, once they've had the instrument, they'll manage to realize it. There's a reason why Bassetti already no longer speaks of a "Lombardy region", but of a "Padania region", of which the rest of Italy would be but an appendix. If they'll succeed (and they will succeed), farewell Risorgimento! It wasn't but a fiction, agreed, and in practice it has failed. But with what will we replace it?”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Diari 1957-78, ed. Rizzoli, 26 September 1972.
1950s - 1990s

Understanding

“During that period von Bertalanffy as a young scholar was not only interested in biology and philosophy of science. He was also interested in history and generally in humanities. He studied Oswald Spengler's theory of history and has written a paper on this topic. His interest in Spengler's theory of history anticipated von Bertalanffy's lifelong attempts to reconcile sciences with humanities.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 4

History, Study, Science

“The best way to learn a topic is by teaching it. Similarly the best way to understand a new proof is by writing an expository article about it.”

Doron Zeilberger (1950) Israeli mathematician

[Kathy O'Hara's constructive proof of the unimodality of the Gaussian polynomials, Amer. Math. Monthly, 96, 1989, 592 of 590–602, http://www.maa.org/programs/maa-awards/writing-awards/kathy-oharas-constructive-proof-of-the-unimodality-of-the-gaussian-polynomials]

Way, Understanding, Learning

“It has been quite humorous watching the acolytes of the iPhone sink into deeper and deeper denial as Android blows through obstacles at ever-accelerating speed. It would require an epic poet, or perhaps a psychiatrist specializing in religious mania, to do full justice to this topic.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: The Stages of Apple-Cultist Denial http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3132 in Armed and Dangerous (18 April 2011)

Justice, Speed

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Quotes about topic
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