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Everything flows and nothing abides;
everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
The distinction between past,
present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Modern man lives increasingly in the
future and neglects the present.
Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a
butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and
doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and
there he was, solid and unmistakeable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was
Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was
Chuang Chou.
... We are such stuff
We are the miracle of force and
matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force
experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted
itself alive. We are one of the shouts.
The reasonable man adapts himself to
the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
If the doors of perception were
cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
The most important questions in life
can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
Content is a word unknown to life;
it is also a word unknown to man.
Only that day dawns to which we are
awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
We feel that even if all possible
scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been
touched at all. Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the
answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this
problem.
That is what learning is. You
suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Uttering a word is like striking a
note on the keyboard of the imagination.
I have no doubt that in reality the
future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own
suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer
than we can suppose.
We cut nature up, organize it into
concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to
an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our
speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
The belief that words have a meaning
of their own account is a relic of primitive word magic, and it is still a part
of the air we breathe in nearly every discussion.
Even the most scientific
investigator in science, the most thoroughgoing Positivist, cannot dispense with
fiction; he must at least make use of categories, and they are already fictions,
analogical fictions, or labels, which give us the same pleasure as children
receive when they are told the "name" of a thing.
Intelligence is that faculty of
mind, by which order is preceived in a situation previously considered
disordered.
To understand is to perceive
patterns.
It is the theory that decides what
can be observed.
The eye sees only what the mind is
prepared to comprehend.
People only see what they are
prepared to see.
Our life is frittered away by
detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in
extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a
hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your
accounts on your thumb nail.
It is vain to do with more what can
be done with less.
The greatest challenge to any
thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
To get anywhere, or even to live a
long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without
enough data for a logical answer.
One does not discover new continents
without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Common sense is the collection of
prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Ignorance is preferable to error,
and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes
what is wrong.
Discovery consists of seeing what
everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Attachment is the great fabricator
of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
If the individual is narrowly
concentrated on the goal, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects of the
problem situation, he is often unable to achieve a solution. The creative
thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work.
The creator is both detached and
committed, free and yet ensnared, concerned but not too much so. ... If
motivation is too strong the person is blinded; if the objective situation is
too tightly structured, the person sees none of its alternative possiblities.
The freedom to create is somehow
linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious
mind.
Some degree of withdrawal serves to
nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the
dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the
unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the lonliness of the process.
A prudent question is one half of
wisdom.
The important thing is not to stop
questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
You see things; and you say,
"Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why
not?"
I have learned the novice can often
see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid
of making mistakes, or of appearing naive.
An essential aspect of creativity is
not being afraid to fail.
Give me the fruitful error any time,
full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile
truth for yourself.
Humans hardly ever learn from the
experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their
own, the hard way.
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. Igor Stravinsky
Experience is the name everyone
gives to their mistakes.
There is an incessant influx of
novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.
He who knows others is learned.
We know what we are, but know not
what we may be.
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
This above all: To thine own self be
true,
Our remedies oft in ourselves do
lie,
All the world's a stage,
Resolve to be thyself: and know that
he
Choices, more choices than we like
afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Clay is moulded to make a vessel,
but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. ...
Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not.
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken,
over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is
going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and
reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers,
but as fountains of life.
In wildness is the preservation of
the World.
When we contemplate the whole globe
as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying
through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the
whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
Man is dragged hither and thither,
at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange
intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand.
I totally disagree with the belief
that nature was only made for the use of people. Human beings are not the center
of the universe, and, if they are to sustain themselves, it is vitally important
for them to be awakened to how closely they are linked with the rest of nature.
Two lights for guidance. The first,
our little glowing atom of community, with all that it signifies. The second,
the cold light of the stars, symbol of the hypercosmical reality, with its
crystal ecstasy. Strange that in this light, in which even the dearest love is
frostily asserted, and even the possible defeat of our half-waking world is
contemplated without remission of praise, the human crisis does not lose but
gains significance. Strange, that it seems more, not less, urgent to play some
part in this struggle, this brief effort of animacules striving to win for their
race some increase of lucidity before the ultimate darkness.
How hard to realize that every camp
of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places
standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special
nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled
stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for
its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.
Man inhabits a realm half in and
half out of nature, his mind reaching forever beyond the tool, the uniformity,
the law, into some realm which is that of the mind alone.
There are one hundred and
ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of
them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo
sapiens. The zoologist now has to start making comparisons. Where else is
nudity at a premium.
To be free one needs constant and
unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral
energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds
of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of
freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an
impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to
test yourself constantly, to gamble.
The individual has always had to
struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a
hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning
yourself.
To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to
fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop
fighting.
At the core of all well-founded
belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
The fact that an opinion has been
widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in
view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more
likely to be foolish than sensible.
Man no longer dreams over a book in
which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him
through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a
screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside.
Madness is rare in individuals--but
in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth
and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Although it is a gloomy view to
suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that
people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation.
Man is a credulous animal, and must
believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be
satisfied with bad ones.
Most of our so-called reasoning
consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
It is frequently the tragedy of the
great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary
man. If he is more than a popular story-teller it may take humanity a generation
to absorb and grow accustomed to the new geography with which the scientist or
artist presents us. Even then, perhaps only the more imaginative and literate
may accept him. Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker;
frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man's opinion of
himself.
Most people would rather die than
think; in fact, they do so.
A great many people think they are
thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Great spirits have always found
violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man
does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and
courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results
of his thoughts in clear form.
Like the herd animals we are, we
sniff warily at the strange one among us.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to
do so.
Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other
argument is necessary to suggest that never miss the opportunity to give
encouragement.
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last. --
from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach:
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. --
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual. --
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
Music is a higher revelation than philosophy. --
It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.
"Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life." -
About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for
you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at
all.
Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. -- Samuel
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your
character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others
think you are.
Love not what you are, but what you may become. --
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe,and sometimes I think we're
not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.
To be nobody-but-yourself--in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. --
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations. -
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds. --
"Immature poets borrow, mature
poets steal"
Only the educated are free. --
A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs...
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. -
Slight not what's near, when aiming
at what's far.
I am not a teacher but an awakener.
No culture can live, if it attempts
to be exclusive.
The graveyards are full of indispensable men. --
If indeed you must be candid, be
candid beautifully.
I am interested in mathematics only
as a creative art.
"Is it a fact - or have I
dreamt it - that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a
great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather,
the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!"
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." -
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -
"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." -
"The best thing about the
future is that it only comes one day at a time."
All that we see or seem,
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. --
Everything has been figured out,
except how to live.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --
Let him that would move the world
first move himself.
"The trouble with the rat race
is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
"I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way." --
Young, Edward. 19th c. English poet. Born originals, how comes it to pass that we all die copies?
Abelson and Sussman, ``Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs'' MIT Press, 1985, pp.xi The programmer must seek both perfection of part and adequacy of collection.
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
Expectations are the enemy of acceptance.
Nietzsche: There are no absolute truths.
Pucham's axiom: If you view your problem closely enough, you'll recognize yourself as part of the problem.
The most important thing in life is not remembering, but forgetting.
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing
sentimental.
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Machado, Antonio Caminante,
no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. [Spanish] Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): What
do you think of Western Civilization?
If you think you have problems now, wait and see the problems you'll have after we give you our solutions.
Support bacteria, it's the only culture some people have.
Politics is like a football game: you have to be smart enough to understand the game, but not smart enough to lose interest.
Anonymous variation on a well-known Chinese proverb [mentioned by Raj Reddy in a panel discussion on India's Future, MIT Nov 11, 85] If you give a fish to a man, then you have fed him for one day. If you give him a fishing rod, then you have fed him for a lifetime. But, if you teach him how to make fishing rods, then you have fed the whole village.
You don't get what you want, you get what you deserve.
Anonymous, in Ancient Assyrian tablet Our earth is degenerate in these later days; bribery is common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching.
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
Modern Man is the missing link between apes and human-beings.
If you don't know what it's supposed to do, you can't tell whether or not it does it.
Bertrand Russell: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Bronowski, J. in ``Science and Human Values,'' 1956 All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.
Bronowski, J. in ``Science and Human Values,'' 1956 Coleridge defines beauty as unity in variety.
Bronowski, J. in ``Science and Human Values,'' 1956 Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding.
Bronowski, J. in ``Science and Human Values,'' 1956 Scientists have been content to think science mechanical and neutral. I challenge all these judgments.
Bronte, Emily Oh, dreadful is the check--intense the agony--
Churchill, Winston A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Cicero: If I had more time, I would write you more briefly.
Confucius: It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Davies, Paul, ``God and the New Physics'' Generally the state of mind of a believer in a revelation is the awful arrogance of saying I know, and those who do not agree with my belief are wrong. In no other field is such arrogance so widespread, in no other field do people feel so utterly certain of their knowledge. It is to me quite disgusting that anybody should feel so superior, so selected and chosen against all the many who differ in their beliefs or unbeliefs. This would be bad enough, but so many believers do their best to propagate their faith, at the very least to their children but often also to others (and historically there are of course plenty of examples of doing this by force and ruthless brutality). The fact is that people of the greatest sincerity and of all levels of intelligence differ and have always differed in their religious beliefs. Since at most one faith can be true, it follows that human beings are extremely liable to believe firmly and honestly in something untrue in the field of revealed religion. One would have expected this obvious fact to lead to some humility, to some thought that however deep one's faith, one may conceivably be mistaken. Nothing is further from the believer, any believer, than this elementary humility.
Dijkstra, Edsger W. in ``Upson's Familiar Quotations (4th ed.)'', Al Gaulle (ed.), Cornell U., CS Dept. Tech Report No. 85-704, Sep 85 It's good to write programs occasionally ... as long as you don't run them.
Donne, John in ``Devotions''. Quotation marks are as in original Any man's ``death'' diminishes ``me'';
Durant, Will in ``Transition'', p. 124 Ah, if we could only relive our past as we would make our future; and if we could only live our future as we [would] remake our past!
Eliot, T.S., ``Little Gidding V'' poem from Four Quartets, 1943. We shall not cease from exploration
Elliot, James He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Emerson, R.W. By necessity, by proclivity, by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Ernst Mach (1916) The theory of relativity is just as unacceptable to me as, say, existence of atom or other such dogmas.
Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790): Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing in the tempting place.
Frye, Northrop The greater writer seldom regards himself as a personality with something to say: his mind is simply a place where something happens to words.
Fuller, Thomas All things are difficult before they are easy.
Garfield, James A. If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best substitute for it.
Han, Shih-Ping in ``Upson's Familiar Quotations (4th ed.)'', Al Gaulle (ed.), Cornell U., CS Dept. Tech Report No. 85-704, Sep 85 Worst cases very rarely happen.
Henri Poincare' A collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Ingalls In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
James, William A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Kant, quoted in ``Prague: Intellectuals & Politicians'' by Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books XLII(1), 1995.01.12: The possession of power unavoidably spoils the free use of reason.
Kierkegaard (19th century Danish Philosopher) Life can only be understood by looking backwards, but it must be lived looking forwards.
Kierkegaard, Soeren Genius never desires what does not exist.
Kitto in ``The Greeks,'' Penguin, 1951 These greeks, practical men though they were, had a passion for asking useless questions.
La Rouchefoucauld Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Lord Byron: Much that I sought, I could not find;
Marshall, Peter Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.
Mohsen Zahran, project director of the new Alexandria Library project, quoted in an article titled ``A beacon of ideas on corniche'' in The Guardian of 21 October 1990, page 22 You can spend all your money on roads and housing and on the poor but in the end you simply find yourself needing more money. Real civilization always starts in the mind. It is ideas that make life grow green. Even our greatest problem, arresting population growth, is a matter of ideas. If we do not have them and cherish them, we shall be tied forever to the wheel of circumstance. I think the Bibliotheca [Alexandrina] will be a beacon of ideas for peoples like us all over the world.
Plato A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.
Plato in ``The Republic,'' I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was able to reason.
Pucham's axiom If you view your problem closely enough, you'll recognize yourself as part of the problem.
Ritchie, Dennis in talk at CMU, 10 Dec 87 UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
**Shaw, G.B. Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Shaw, G.B. in ``Major Barbara,'' Penguin Plays 1985 (1905) Undershaft: You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
Shopenhauer Spinoza says that if a stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine that it was flying of its own will. I add merely that the stone would be right.
Solomon, King, Proverbs chapters 17 and 18 · Let a man meet a bear robbed of her cubs, rather than a fool in his folly. · The beginning of strife is like releasing water; therefore stop contention before a quarrel starts. · Wisdom is in the sight of him who has understanding, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. · He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. · A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart. · A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for blows. · A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.
Solzhenitsyn When man was created, he was given a lifespan of 25 years. Unsatisfied, he asked the horse to give him another 25 years from his own lifespan. The horse agreed. Still unsatisfied, he asked the dog to give him another 25 years. The dog agreed. He was finally satisfied only after the monkey had agreed to give him a fourth 25 years. Therefore, man lives as human being for the first twenty five years of his live, works like a horse for the next twenty five, pants like a dog for the third quarter century of his life, and ends his life making a fool of himself like a monkey.
Tagore, Rabindranath: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Twain, Mark I'm an old man,
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
Whitehead, Alfred North in ``An Introduction to Mathematics,'' London: Williams and Norgate, c1911, pp. 11. To see what is general in what is particular and what is permanent in what is transitory is the aim of scientific thought.
Whitehead, Alfred North in ``An Introduction to Mathematics,'' London: Williams and Norgate, c1911, pp. 59. By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
Whitehead, Alfred North in ``An Introduction to Mathematics,'' London: Williams and Norgate, c1911, pp. 61. It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle---they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Wilde, Oscar Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
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