Quotes about university
page 15

“Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Introduction to 'We're Losing Contact, Captain'" (p.353)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

World, Universe

“Even the most "Rational" people — the ones who claimed not to have a religion — were just as chauvinistic about their irreligion, sneering at and ostracizing the believers just the way the believers treated nonmembers of their own groups. It's a human universal.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

People, Religion, Way, Universe

“The House of Representatives, in some respects, I think, is the most peculiar assemblage in the world, and only a man who has had long experience there can fully know its idiosyncrasies. It is true we engage in fierce combat, we are often intense partisans, sometimes we are unfair, not infrequently unjust, brutal at times, and yet I venture to say that, taken as a whole, the House is sound at heart; nowhere else will you find such a ready appreciation of merit and character, in few gatherings of equal size is there so little jealousy and envy.
The House must be considerate of the feelings of its Members; there is a certain courtesy that has to be observed; a man may be voted a bore or shunned as a pest, and yet he must be accorded the rights to which he is entitled by virtue of being a representative of the people. On the other hand, a man may be universally popular, a good fellow, amusing and yet with these engaging qualities never get far. The men who have led the House, whose names have become a splendid tradition to their successors, have gained prominence not through luck or by mere accident. They have had ability, at least in some degree; but more than that, they have had character.”

Joseph Gurney Cannon (1836–1926) American politician

Quoted in L. White Busby, Uncle Joe Cannon: The Story of a Pioneer American (1937), p. 260

Men, People, World, Jealousy

“Khouri did not need to be told that Hades was a neutron star, any more than she needed to be told that there was no such thing as a safe close encounter with one. You either kept away or you died; those were the rules, and there was no force in the universe capable of negating them. Gravity ruled, and gravity did not take into account circumstances, or the unfairness of things, or listen to eleventh-hour petitions before reluctantly repealing its laws. Gravity crushed, and near the surface of a neutron star gravity crushed absolutely, until diamond flowed like water; until a mountain collapsed into a millionth of its height.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 37 (p. 554).

Law, Mountain, Star, Universe

“Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843) Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/57/12260.html, vol. 1, letter 33

Children, Age, Universe, Heart

“To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Idea, Universe, Science

“If a North Korean university professor is suspected of insufficient enthusiasm for the system, they will be gone without a trace very quickly. Even the memory of the unlucky victim would likely disappear, since such topics are best not discussed in North Korea.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

The Folly of an Inter-Korean Confederation (October 2015)

Universe, Memory

“Another example — maybe a better one, in a way — was when it was confirmed that Michael Jackson was going to marry Elvis Presley's daughter. [loud, game-show buzzer noise] A good friend of mine in the States faxed me, and he simply … he said, "This makes your job more difficult." And I knew exactly, I knew exactly what he meant. 'Cos something … a scenario that seemed to belong to the universe of the late Terry Southern, was suddenly, suddenly real. It's that truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Truth, Way, Game, Thinking

“The creationist account is as factual, historical and perspicuous and is thus fundamental in the understanding of every fact and phenomenon in the created universe.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

Source: To run a constitution, 1986, p. 176

Understanding, Universe

“The universe may
be as great as they say.
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

Nothing Is Indespensable : Grook to warn the universe against megalomania
Grooks

Universe

“We know that Hong Kong, after the handover to mainland China, has been trying for universal suffrage … We know that mainland China has made promises and we're of course pleased to see Hong Kong changing in this direction.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Source: Ma Ying-jeou (2013) cited in: " Ma says meeting with Xi Jinping rests on popular approval http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/china-taiwan-relations/2013/07/27/384866/Ma-says.htm" in The China Post, 27 July 2013. Statement made at the Presidential Office in Taipei commenting on the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, 25 July 2013.

Universe, Change

“School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system?... from the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy. The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn't agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation. Then one day this student brought me Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.”

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

Source: William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), First conversation, p. 8

God, Hate, Books, Youth

“"Do nothing" does not mean "don’t do anything", "mu" or "nothing" is not merely the lack of something. It refers to the state in which the mind has grown imperceptibly calm, and then allowed things to take their natural course. If you can leave things entirely up to the universe and not put up the slightest resistance, then you can pass the highest level of ki tests.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

24
Ki Sayings (2003)

Nature, Universe

“I absolutely love Bela Lugosi's Count. One thing that always interesting to bear in mind in the great history of Dracula is that, I think almost without exception the film's release has always been surrounded by controversy. Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula at the time was regarded as essentially a kind of B-movie piece of junk. Whereas now, I think it has real luster and appeal to people. I looked at Bella's Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films, I thought it was kind of good to do that.”

Richard Roxburgh (1962) Australian actor

An Iinterview With Dracula and His Brides http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/an-interview-with-dracula-and-his-brides (May 5, 2004)

Love, People, History, Thinking

“Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Revolution From Within

World, Universe

“Alexander: I myself was educated in Italy. My doctorate in philosophy is from the University of Padua.
Renne: Really? Philosophy?
Alexander: My dissertation was on worms.
Renne: Worms the philosopher?
Alexander: No, just worms.
Renne: Ah, the philosophy of worms.
Alexander: Not at all. Worms have no philosophy, as far as is known.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)

Education, Universe

“Our idealists must own that their velleity to abolish all suffering is most fully expressed in the Fifth Wisdom of Lamaism, the doctrine that teaches that "no durable happiness, nor yet security, for any sentient being can exist while others are a prey to suffering." That truth cannot be questioned and you may take it to heart: in practical terms it means we got ourselves born on the wrong planet -- in the wrong universe.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"On the Roof of the World", Liberty Bell magazine (December 1987)
1970s, 1980s

Wisdom, Happiness, Truth, Question

“Yes, I think I am a realist. Because I make what I see. It's only the problem of seeing it. If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space - then you can make it, and tout de suite you're a realist. The universe is real but you can't see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Léger once called you a realist. How do you feel about this?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Imagination, Problem, Thinking, Universe

“The contemporary mathematical and symbolic logic is certainly very different from its classical predecessor, but they share the radical opposition to dialectical logic. In terms of this opposition, the old and the new formal logic express the same mode of thought. it is purged from that “negative” which loomed so large at the origins of logic and of philosophic thought — the experience of the denying, deceptive, falsifying power of the established reality. And with the elimination of this experience, the conceptual effort to sustain the tension between “is” and “ought”, and to subvert the established universe of discourse in the name of its own truth is likewise eliminated from all thought which is to be objective, exact, and scientific. For the scientific subversion of the immediate experience which establishes the truth of science as against that of immediate experience does not develop the concepts which carry in themselves the protest and the refusal. The new scientific truth which they oppose to the accepted one does not contain in itself the judgment that condemns the established reality. … In contrast, dialectical thought is and remains unscientific to the extent to which it is such judgment.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 139-140

Truth, Mathematics, Reality, Effort

“Bill Clinton said in his Portland State University speech that anyone who doesn't want America to become darker is "un-American." Isn't that something? This jerk who used to organize anti-American demonstrations during the Vietnam war and chant, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chih Minh, the Viet Cong's gonna win," is now telling us that we're "un-American"!”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Thinking About a White Future, 1998
1990s, 1990

War, Jerk, Universe

“The right path to health-care reform is the market path (no subsidies, no monopolies such as drug patents, no licensure, no anything) that tends toward universal distribution at very low prices and relentless improvement in service. The wrong path is to make health care run the same way as the post office. Obama seems to favor the latter path, even though he admits that it is the least well-performing one. This is surely the definition of fanaticism. If the mobs aren't angry, they should be.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

13 August 2009, "Obama and the Post Office" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/obama-postoffice126.html 2000s

Health, Way, Universe

“In this way I can speak of an American Hinduism and call myself an American and a Hindu – an American connected with the land and a Hindu connected with the spirit and soul of that land. Hinduism has helped me discover the forces of nature in which I live, their past and their future, their unique formations and their connections with the greater universe and the cosmic mind.”

David Frawley (1950) American Hindu teacher

How I Became A Hindu - My Discovery Of Vedic Dharma

Way, Soul, Nature, Universe

“What has become of the descendants of the irresponsible adventurers, the scapegrace sons, the bond servants, the redemptionists and the indentured maidens, the undesirables, and even the criminals, which made up-not all, of course, but nevertheless a considerable part of-the earliest emigrants to these virgin countries?
They have become the leaders of the thought of the world, the vanguard in the march of progress, the inspirers of liberty, the creators of national prosperity, the sponsors of universal education and enlightenment.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Communication to the American Crime Study Commission (May 19, 1929)

World, Education, Universe, Parting

“The new plastic idea cannot, therefore, take the form of a natural or concrete representation, although the latter does always indicate the universal to a degree, or at least conceals it within.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Idea, Nature, Universe

“Yoga, as it was understood by its sages, is designed to satisfy all the human needs in a comprehensive, seamless whole. Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness –oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves. We become the harmonious microcosm in the universal microcosm. Oneness, what I call integration, is the foundation for wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Peace, Freedom, Universe

“The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation
to every quarter where Christians live;
and these God-fearing people, elated,
stand in their doorways and greet it reverently,
the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

A Great Procession of Priests and Laymen http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=87&cat=1 Collected Poems (1992)

God, People, Fear, Universe

“(a) There is a general tendency towards integration in the various sciences, natural and social. (b) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems. (c) Such theory may be an important means of aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science. (d) Developing unifying principles running "vertically" through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer to the goal of the unity of sciences. (e) This can lead to a much needed integration in scientific education.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Variant: Mayor aims of general theory: (1) There is a general tendency toward integration in the various sciences, natural and social. (2) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems. (3) Such theory may be an important means for aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science. (4) Developing unifying principles running "vertically" through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer the goal of the unity of science. (5) This can lead to a much-needed integration in scientific education. Source: 1950s, "General systems theory," 1956, p. 38, cited in: Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

Education, Nature, Universe, Science

“Finally, let me explain why this De la Rosa World Summit is the last Neo-Tech summit -- and why that may be the best news. But, first, I want to hail whom I believe to be the most genuinely-happy spirit in today’s anticivilization -- a beautiful person who brings to us her happiness made from the love of life as we travel toward the Civilization of the Universe. Let us emblazon our own spirits by remembering this lovely beam of light -- this enduring beacon of joy, this amazingly-wonderful person -- our free-spirit Summit impresario, Rosa María Wallace. …What a woman!”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Keynote Address for The Neo-Tech 2003 World Summit. Pax Neo-Tech. http://www.neo-tech.com/neotech/pax-b1/a3.php

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“I don't believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if they say they are Catholic, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?" Mock them. Ridicule them. In public. Don't fall for the convention that we're all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.”

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

Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Religion, Universe, Wine, Christ

“There is no lack of diagnoses of the manifold ills that beset the international order, coherent and even convincing diagnoses by foremost think tanks, universities and outstanding individual researchers all over the world. Obstacles to an improved world order are evident, but remedies do not materialize. Is it because the real power no longer resides in States and Governments but rather in the economy, the intelligence community, the military-industrial and financial-industrial complexes, which are neither democratic nor transparent and operate impervious to reasons other than power or profit? The answers are complex and require further research, which may contribute to future reports on the vast menu of General Assembly resolution 67/175.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

World, Intelligence, Communication, Thinking

“With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material [butterfly wings, around 1955] – the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable – with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, p. 116

Life, Universe, Parting, Drawing

“Carolina or Virginia may try to break away. In the effort it may destroy its local government as it has now destroyed it, except by successful revolution no rebellious state can escape the jurisdiction, and it will be reorganized exclusively by the national authority of the United States of America. This is what Gettysburg roars and Vicksburg and Port Royal. This is the thunder of the Kearsarge as she sinks the Alabama, This is the song of Sherman's march to the sea; and Lee's surrender, the fall of Richmond, and the universal crash of the rebellion mutter and murmur their reluctant 'Amen, Amen'. But, at the same moment that the profound sense of nationality and the power of the nation are revealed, the national mind has gained a clear perception of the relation of morals and politics, the strict dependence of civil order and national prosperity upon morality.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Sense, Effort, Universe, Success

“I now understand the need for faith—pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith—as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 1 (p. 90)

Life, Faith, Law, Understanding

“The whole Mount still kept the grand style; it expressed the unity of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, Good and Bad; it solved the whole problem of the universe.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Life, Death, God, War

“With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

World, Way, Communication, Problem

“For to pass by those Ancients, the wonderful Pythagoras, the sagacious Democritus, the divine Plato, the most subtle and very learned Aristotle, Men whom every Age has hitherto acknowledged as deservedly honored, as the greatest Philosophers, the Ring-leaders of Arts; in whose Judgments how much these Studies [mathematics] were esteemed, is abundantly proclaimed in History and confirmed by their famous Monuments, which are everywhere interspersed and bespangled with Mathematical Reasonings and Examples, as with so many Stars; and consequently anyone not in some Degree conversant in these Studies will in vain expect to understand, or unlock their hidden Meanings, without the Help of a Mathematical Key: For who can play well on Aristotle’s Instrument but with a Mathematical Quill; or not be altogether deaf to the Lessons of natural Philosophy, while ignorant of Geometry? Who void of (Geometry shall I say, or) Arithmetic can comprehend Plato’s 218 Socrates lisping with Children concerning Square Numbers; or can conceive Plato himself treating not only of the Universe, but the Polity of Commonwealths regulated by the Laws of Geometry, and formed according to a Mathematical Plan?”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), pp. 26-27

Men, Children, Age, Law

“If we should classify one by one all those who hate others and injure others, should we find them to be universal in love or partial? Of course we should say they are partial. Now, since partiality against one another is the cause of the major calamities in the empire, then partiality is wrong.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love III
Mozi

Love, Hate, Universe

“The real writers are tenacious creatures, and they found a way long before there were writers workshops and creative writing courses in the universities. In the absence of formal frameworks, personal initiatives and informal frameworks become more important.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

Way, Universe, Personality

“The poet's job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. He gives you the typical, recurring, or what Aristotle calls universal event.”

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

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

Universe

“There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book II, ch. 1 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk2ch1.asp: Of Property in General. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

World, Exercises, Imagination, Universe

“Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean formula that gravity causes all bodies to descend with equal rapidity, without reference to their weight, the difference being caused by some other unknown agency, would seem to point a great deal more forcibly to magnetism than to gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the substance than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of everything existing in nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions; the cause of these, traced to the spiritual principle which pervades and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best conditions for this principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law — this was and is the basis of magic.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Law, Nature, Knowledge, Universe

“Science is not religion. We're not going to be able to answer the "why" questions. But when you put together all of what we know about the universe, it fits together amazingly well.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

Religion, Question, Universe, Science

“In terms of composition the new plasticism is dualistic. Through the exact reconstruction of cosmic relations it is a direct expression of the universal; by its rhythm, by the material reality of its plastic form, it expresses the artist's individual subjectivity. It thus unfolds before us a whole world of universal beauty without thereby renouncing the human element.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

World, Beauty, Reality, Universe

“Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road" http://www.bartleby.com/142/82., 12, Leaves of Grass (1855) Misattributed

Death, Age, Freedom, Universe

“These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides."”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Silent Spring (1962)

Life, Home, Bird, Fish

“The space of our universe is the hypersurface of a vast expanding hypersphere.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 107

Universe

“Our culture has a universal myth in which we see emotion as more complex and obscure than intellect. Indeed, emotion might be "deeper" in some sense of prior evolution, but this need not make it harder to understand; in fact, I think today we actually know much more about emotion than about reason.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

Understanding, Thinking, Sense, Universe

“University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is one of the most outstanding universities, and the Chemistry Department there ranks first amongst the universities of the world in research performance. This department was established by G. N. Lewis, who is considered to be the father of modern chemistry.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Source: Climbing the Limitless Ladder: A Life in Chemistry (2010), p. 32

World, Universe

“We would wish to discover the Plan of the Universe, and the means employed by the Eternal Architect in the execution of his magnificent design. We will first contemplate the System of which we make a part, and of which our Sun is the center. Thence we will ascend towards those Suns and those innumerable Worlds which are scattered through the immensity of space.”

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) German mathematician, physicist and astronomer

Introduction, p. xxxix
The System of the World (1800)

World, Universe, Sun, Parting

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, God, Age, Religion

“Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight. The Universe did not create Life in the hope that the failure of the majority would underscore the success of the few. Spirtiuality atleast, we live in a democracy, an equal opportunity society.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

Life, Hope, Democracy, Failure

“Second Theory.—Whilst one part of the Universe owes its existence to Providence and is under control of a ruler and governor, another part is abandoned and left to chance. This is the view of Aristotle about Providence… He holds that God controls the spheres and what they contain; therefore the individual beings in the spheres remain permanently in the same form. …From the existence of the spheres other beings derive existence, which are constant in their species but not in their individuals.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

God, Universe, Chance, Parting

“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

Life, Universe, Chance, Parting

“We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe; that's a good estimate with well-defined error bars and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.”

Simon Singh (1964) British author

Nine Million Bicycles, alternative lyrics. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1581445,00.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21iUUe-W8L4

Error, Light, Universe

“While universities make robots that look more like human beings every time, not only because of their proven intelligence but now also because of their abilities to express and receive emotions, the consumerist habits are making us every time more similar to robots.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Cybors (2012)

Intelligence, Universe, Time

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Money, People, Alcohol, World

“The mescal bead… is no mere symbol. For those who wear it, it really does enfold the universe and bring them into contact with all of creation.”

F. David Peat (1938–2017) British physicist

The Blackfoot Physics (2006)

Universe

“Logic is not concerned with human behavior in the same sense that physiology, psychology, and social sciences are concerned with it. These sciences formulate laws or universal statements which have as their subject matter human activities as processes in time. Logic, on the contrary, is concerned with relations between factual sentences (or thoughts). If logic ever discusses the truth of factual sentences it does so only conditionally, somewhat as follows: if such-and-such a sentence is true, then such-and-such another sentence is true. Logic itself does not decide whether the first sentence is true, but surrenders that question to one or the other of the empirical sciences.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Rudolf Carnap (1937) cited in: Irving J. Lee (1967) The Language of Wisdom and Folly: Background Readings in Semantics. International Society for General Semantics, p. 44

Truth, Law, Behavior, Question

“What can be called "consciousness of the process of abstraction." That is, consciousness of the fact that out of a virtually infinite universe of possible things to pay attention to, we abstract only certain portions, and those portions turn out to be the ones for which we have verbal labels and categories. What we abstract, i. e., "see," and how we abstract it, or see it, or see it or think about it, is for all practical purposes inseparable from how we talk about it.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

Thinking, Universe

“Diversity is one of the high priorities that I expected everybody in the leadership position at the university to be committed to.”

Robert J. Birgeneau (1942) Canadian physicist

as quoted in Searching for science policy, by Jonathan B. Imber, published by Transaction Publishers (2002), ISBN 0-765-80163-9, p. 27.

Universe

“For me, the first challenge for computing science is to discover how to maintain order in a finite, but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined. And a second, but not less important challenge is how to mould what you have achieved in solving the first problem, into a teachable discipline: it does not suffice to hone your own intellect (that will join you in your grave), you must teach others how to hone theirs. The more you concentrate on these two challenges, the clearer you will see that they are only two sides of the same coin: teaching yourself is discovering what is teachable.”

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

Dijkstra (1979) My hopes of computing science http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD07xx/EWD709.html (EWD 709). 1970s

Problem, Universe, Science

“The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented… I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 268

Universe

“It is no exaggeration to state that the classic culture of Tlön comprises only one discipline: psychology. All others are subordinated to it. I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

Men, Universe, Time, Success

“The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish (1977)

Education, Behavior, Teachers, Universe

“The second observation is that poetry is a universal human art. Despite post-modern theories of cultural relativism that assert there are no human universals, there exists a massive and compelling body of empirical data, collected and documented by anthropologists, linguists, and archeologists that demonstrates there is no human society, however isolated, that has not developed and employed poetry as a cultural practice. Most of this poetry, of course, has been oral poetry. Many of these cultures never developed writing. But the fact remains—and it is a demonstrable fact, not mere opinion—that every society has developed a special class of speech, shaped by apprehensible patterns of sound, namely, poetry”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

9-10
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

Art, Universe

“How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And does n’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 97
Collected Poems (1993)

Happiness, Fear, Universe, Sun

“Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order…”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

One Human Minute (1986)

War, World, Faith, Religion

“I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life.”

Horatio Bottomley (1860–1933) English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament

Speaking at the Oxford Union, December 2, 1920; quoted in Beverley Nichols 25: Being a Young Man's Candid Recollections of his Elders and Betters (London, 1926), ch. 7, p. 69.
Sometimes said to have been the first usage of this now ubiquitous cliché, though in fact the phrase university of life had been in use for many years. Some early instances:
"The disciplined minds that go from [their university's] walls will be its jewels…It will worthily introduce them to the University of Life." ~ The New Englander and Yale Review (February 1853), p. 70.
"The late Professor Greenleaf…who, not born to affluence, and not bred up to scholarly studies, achieved an honorable scholarship in the university of life". ~ Cornelius Conway Felton An Address Delivered before the Association of the Alumni of Harvard College, July 20, 1854 (Cambridge, Mass., 1854), p. 7.
"But God be thanked…for the university of life where we may acquire, at the same time that we put in practice, the rules which are to fit us for, and conduct us through the eternities." Elizabeth D. Livermore Zoë (Cincinnati, 1855), p. 14.
"When our men go into the great university of life…there are few, indeed, who have practical reason to regret that so many years were spent in the severe but salutary discipline imposed by the University of Dublin." ~ The Dublin University Magazine (April 1858), p. 419.

Life, Education, Universe

“I think every gentleman on this floor is as well satisfied as I am that Duluth is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the universe, and that this road should be built at once.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871.

Thinking, Universe

“Prisons are the universities of the opposition.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: Blog of the autor, 6 March 2008 http://korwin-mikke.blog.onet.pl/Uroczystosci-w-Palacu,2,ID299671676,n

Universe

“If you stand up to people, they'll respect you for it. I had an e-mail from a Cambridge University American law student, and he said, 'You are an evil f------ man,' so I called him up - he put his telephone number on it - and I said, 'I'm going to call the police if I have any more messages like this from you. This is an abusive, threatening letter.' And he invited me to give a lecture. I couldn't do it, but I would have done it if I'd had the time.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

A reporter who thinks objective journalism is a synonym for government mouthpiece http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/02/INGRU2KJHA1.DTL, November 2, 2003 2003

People, Law, Universe, Evil

“I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, " Solution of a Question in the Theory of Probabilities http://books.google.nl/books?id=9xtDAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA32" (30 November 1853) published in The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science‬‎ (January 1854), p. 32 1850s

Law, Mathematics, Question, Universe

“Ever since 1953, when Russell Kirk produced its intellectual coat of arms, conservatism has been "what Edmund Burke wrote." This is the equivalent of Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art—art is whatever the art world says it is. But it’s also a cop-out. Instead of analyzing conservatism in an Aristotelian way, instead of asking how we use the term in real life, we just describe Burke. In the process, don’t we risk fleeing into what Tanenhaus calls an "alternative universe"? If conservatives are "glaringly disconnected from the realities now besetting America," as Tanenhaus says, why is the solution to be more like a man who wore a powdered wig? Liberals have problems of their own, but, to their credit, they don’t sit around debating whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards is the "real Rousseauian."”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Conservatism Turned Upside Down: Sam Tanenhaus' Critique of Conservative Reason (2009)

Life, World, Art, Way

“Classical science in its diverse disciplines, be it chemistry, biology, psychology or the social sciences, tried to isolate the elements of the observed universe - chemical compounds and enzymes, cells, elementary sensations, freely competing individuals, what not -- expecting that, by putting them together again, conceptually or experimentally, the whole or system - cell, mind, society - would result and be intelligible. Now we have learned that for an understanding not only the elements but their interrelations as well are required: say, the interplay of enzymes in a cell, of many mental processes conscious and unconscious, the structure and dynamics of social systems and the like.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), p. xix

Intelligence, Understanding, Learning, Universe

“The university system in 2014, it's like the Catholic Church circa 1514… You have this priestly class of professors that doesn't do very much work; people are buying indulgences in the form of amassing enormous debt for the sort of the secular salvation that a diploma represents. And what I think is also similar to the 16th century is that the Reformation will come largely from the outside.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an episode http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/peter-thiel/ of "Conversations with Bill Kristol" (2014)

People, Thinking, Universe

“"One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?"
Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl.
He asked: "You really want an answer?"
"I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."
"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being — yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe. The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some kind, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)

God, Thinking, Universe

“Years ago, my mother and I fell in love with Busybee’s voice, its calm, even tone, and a smile which was always audible in the language. My father, meanwhile, is clipping his nails fastidiously, letting them fall on to an old, spread-out copy of the Times of India, till he sneezes explosively, as he customarily does, sending the crescent-shaped nail-clippings flying into the universe.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Love, Smile, Universe, Time

“Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6 (Orr)

Life, Grass, Universe, Parting

“Seamus Heaney is no more Irish than that other poet of the local, universal and eternal, James Joyce. Both men think locally and globally.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Book Depository interview with Mark Thwaite 2009
Other Quotes

Men, Thinking, Universe

“[Relativist] Rel. There is a well-known proposition of Euclid which states that "Any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third side." Can either of you tell me whether nowadays there is good reason to believe that this proposition is true?
[Pure Mathematician] Math. For my part, I am quite unable to say whether the proposition is true or not. I can deduce it by trustworthy reasoning from certain other propositions or axioms, which are supposed to be still more elementary. If these axioms are true, the proposition is true; if the axioms are not true, the proposition is not true universally. Whether the axioms are true or not I cannot say, and it is outside my province to consider.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

Universe, Parting

“What you are about to read is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest.”

Neal Stephenson book The Big U

"The Go Big Red Fan" (prologue)
The Big U (1984)

Universe, Reading

“Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Memories of President Lincoln, 14
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love, Life, Death, Knowledge

“"Why do you fight?"… He kept his wife, his kid, from dying. That was nothing. Less than nothing. If he had had money, if he could have left it to them, he would have been free to go and get killed. As if the universe had not treated him all his life with kicks in the belly, it now despoiled him of the only dignity he could ever possess — his death.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

Life, Death, Money, Universe

“If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Thinking, Freedom, Universe, Evil

“Upon Clifford's death the labour of revision and completion was entrusted to Mr. R. C. Rowe, then Professor of Pure Mathematics at University College, London. …On the sad death of Professor Rowe, in October 1884, I was requested… to take up the task of editing… For the latter half of Chapter III. and for the whole of Chapter IV. …I am alone responsible. Yet whatever there is in them of value I owe to Clifford; whatever is feeble or obscure is my own. …With Chapter V. my task has been by no means light. …Without any notice of mass or force it seemed impossible to close a discussion on motion; something I felt must be added. I have accordingly introduced a few pages on the laws of motion. I have since found that Clifford intended to write a concluding chapter on mass. How to express the laws of motion in a form of which Clifford would have approved was indeed an insoluble riddle to me, because I was unaware of his having written anything on the subject. I have accordingly expressed, although with great hesitation, my own views on the subject; these may be concisely described as a strong desire to see the terms matter and force, together with the ideas associated with them, entirely removed from scientific terminology—to reduce, in fact, all dynamic to kinematic. I should hardly have ventured to put forward these views had I not recently discovered that they have (allowing for certain minor differences) the weighty authority of Professor Mach, of Prag. But since writing these pages I have also been referred to a discourse delivered by Clifford at the Royal Institution in 1873, some account of which appeared in Nature, June 10, 1880. Therein it is stated that 'no mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mechanics.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

This fragmentary account of the discourse undoubtedly proves that Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved.
Preface by Karl Pearson
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)

Death, Books, Sadness, Law

“In the second year of my residence in Gottingen, I entered my name for a course of lectures on practical physics, against the advice of all my friends, but I have never regretted so doing, as there never has been, and probably never will be, a greater man at the university than Doctor Schroder, physician to the king, who gave, at that period, his celebrated lectures on practical physics. Schroder himself was astonished at the step I had taken; but when he perceived that I fully understood him, I became one of his favourite pupils; nor had I the advantage alone of receiving private lessons gratis, but he took me with him in most of his professional visits, where I had all the advantages of his great practice. Thus I caught a putrid fever which was then very prevalent; Schroeder attended me day and night, and giving up all hopes of my recovery, he observed to one of his friends, not thinking that I understood what he said, "The expansion of the sinews increases." "Then," answered I, in a quiet manner, "I shall die in four days, according to such and such a rule of Hippocrates: pray, prepare my father to receive the news of my death." However, immediately after, a sudden turn in the disorder taking place, I soon recovered; not so my memory, which I lost for a time, so that I had forgotten the names of my best friends; my nerves were so completely shaken, that I had no wish to recover. After my recovery, Professor Schroeder being himself attacked with the same fever, requested of his wife that no other physician than myself should attend him; but when he became light-headed, she called in all the physicians of Gottingen, and these gentlemen not agreeing in opinion respecting the treatment of the patient, this great and learned man fell a victim to ignorance and jealousy, April 21, 1772. I cannot think of this celebrated and good man without shedding tears of regret and gratitude.”

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

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Death, Jealousy, Hope, Thinking

“Granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the universal law, the last word, of nature, still if only one man should stand up and say, "It shall be so no more," if he should say, "It is not the last word of my nature, and my acts and life declare that it is not," then that so-called law would be at an end.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

England's Ideal: And Other Papers on Social Subjects (1887) p. 54

Life, Law, Nature, Universe

“Only through intuition does a work rise above more or less subjective expression. Different periods produce different feelings and conceptions, and in each period men differ. Consequently different art expressions even in a single period are not only logical but a tribute to the general development of art. Intuition always finds the way of progress, which is continuous growth toward a clearer establishment of the content of art: the unification of man with the universe.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

'A New Realism', p. 17
1940's, A New Realism', 1943-1945

Men, Art, Way, Feeling

“It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Guy, Star, Thinking, Universe

“Design demands a designer. Frogs don’t turn into princes, and “big bangs” make big messes not neat, orderly universes. There are no facts to support evolutionism. It stands royally naked.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Support, Universe

“Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day which contain questions for solution without noticing how singular a charm such problems still continue to exert. The interest in numbers seems implanted in the human mind, and it is a pity that it should not have freer scope in this country. The methods of the theory of numbers 271 are peculiar to itself, and are not readily acquired by a student whose mind has for years been familiarized with the very different treatment which is appropriate to the theory of continuous magnitude; it is therefore extremely desirable that some portion of the theory should be included in the ordinary course of mathematical instruction at our University. From the moment that Gauss, in his wonderful treatise of 1801, laid down the true lines of the theory, it entered upon a new day, and no one is likely to be able to do useful work in any part of the subject who is unacquainted with the principles and conceptions with which he endowed it.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the theory of numbers

Mathematics, Question, Problem, Universe

“Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 280

Universe, Change, Future

“But let them tell you what type of an Apostle or prophet God promised them. Was it a man from some of the enemy colleges and universities with an arm full of degrees coming from these institutions of learning of the enemy?Let them read their scriptures and see what type of man God promised to choose for a last messenger. How many of the prophets in the past were educated men of the civilization in which they were born before the call of God?”

Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) American religious leader

Message to the Blackman (1965)

Men, God, Education, Learning

“In its origin, liberalism had no ambition to be universal either in the sense of claiming to be valid for everyone and every human society or in the sense of purporting to give an answer to all the important questions of human life. … The ideal of liberalism is a practically engaged political philosophy that is both epistemically and morally highly abstemious. That is, at best, a very difficult and possibly a completely hopeless project. It is therefore not surprising that liberals succumb again and again to the temptation to go beyond the limits they would ideally like to set for themselves and try to make of liberalism a complete philosophy of life. … In the middle of the twentieth century, Kantianism presented itself as a “philosophical foundation” for a version of liberalism, and liberals at that time were sufficiently weak and self-deceived (or strong and opportunistic) to accept the offer.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” pp. 24-25.
Outside Ethics (2005)

Life, Question, Sense, Strong

“I wrote, after an early rejection, "X turned down Wrinkle, turned it down with one hand while saying that he loved it, but didn't quite dare to do it, as it really isn't classifiable. I know it isn't really classifiable, and am wondering if i'll have to go through the usual hell with this that I seem to go through with everything I write. But this book I'm sure of. If I've ever written a book that says how I feel about God and the universe, this is it. This is my psalm of praise…”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 4.10
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Love, God, Books, Feeling

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

Nine Million Bicycles, alternative lyrics, written by scientist Simon Singh.
[Singh, Simon, Katie Melua's Bad Science, The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Limited, 30 September 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/sep/30/highereducation.uk]
[12 or 13.7 billion light years?, 10 January 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21iUUe-W8L4, video]
Lyrics

Error, Light, Universe

“Conservatives have, on the whole, accepted nationality as a sphere of local duties and loyalties, defining an inheritance and a community that has a right to pass on its values from generation to generation. The nation may indeed be the best that we now have, by way of a society linking the dead to the unborn, in the manner extolled by Burke. And for this very reason it arouses the hostility of liberals, who are constantly searching for a place outside loyalty and obedience, from which all human claims can be judged. Hence, in the conflicts of our times, while conservatives leap to the defense of the nation and its interests, wishing to maintain its integrity and to enforce its law, liberals advocate transnational initiatives, international courts, and doctrines of universal rights, all of which, they believe, should stand in judgment over the nation and hold it to account.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"The Limits of Liberty," http://spectator.org/42528_back-basics/ The American Spectator (December 2008).

Hostility, Law, Way, Search

“Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful, strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables… Let your love flow out on all living things.
But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God, and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets, including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone.”

William Styron book Sophie's Choice

Source: Sophie's Choice (1979), Ch. 16; the italicized words being quotes of the song "Let Your Love Flow" by Larry E. Williams, as sung by The Bellamy Brothers

Love, God, Truth, Beauty

“I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 1
An American Dream (1965)

Death, Motivation, Universe

“Whether one agrees with the Communist Party or not, one must at least know the truth about it. One must not permit his ideas to be shaped by the hysteria which now passes as a "crusade against Communism."… For example, the canard that every Communist has his pockets lined with "Moscow gold." If that were true, one could be sure that there would scarcely be any room in our party for workers. The capitalists, to whom gold is god of the universe, would crowd them out.”

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. (1903–1964) American politician

"Why I am a Communist" (1947)

God, Truth, Communication, Idea

Quotes about university page 15

Quotes about university
page 15