(not a live-maintained list. yet. but closer.)
“The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.”
- —Paul Simon
So much better that i am overwhelmed and paralyzed sometimes in the face of it. I don't believe that it's indelible, however.
“There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.”
- —Walt Kelly, later frequently “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” and spoken by Kelly's character Pogo
“We can debug relationships, but it’s always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.”
- —Larry Wall, second State of the Onion (Perl) speech
“The common sand that you tread underfoot, let it be cast into the furnace to boil and melt and it will become a crystal as splendid as that through which Galileo and Newton discovered the stars.”
- —from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and he never knew the silicon chip
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
- —T. S. Eliot
“The outer mind is 99.999999 percent comatose. It simply does not realize the unconscious forces that dominate or direct the life of the individual.”
- —W. Brugh Joy, Healing and the Unconscious
“We must face the fact that we are on the brink of times when man may be able to magnify his intellectual and inventive capability, just as in the nineteenth century he used machines to magnify his physical capacity. Again, as then, our innocence is lost. And again, of course, the innocence, once lost, cannot be regained. The loss demands attention, not denial.”
- —ChristopherAlexander?, 1964
“Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.”
- —Kjet Svensndot, 1000s++ years in the future in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep
“The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.”
- —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“If you don't like the news go out and make some of your own.”
- —Scoop Nisker
Our Deepest Fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our Deepest Fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- —Marianne Williamson
“If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”
- —Albert Einstein
“Every day we, as a species, do so much to destroy Creation’s ability to give us life. But that Creation continues to do everything in its power to give us life anyway. And that's true love.”
- —Julia Butterfly Hill
“When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards
them as they do towards other humans.”
- —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.)
“Hating is a sickness.”
- —WWII prisoner of war
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”
- —Mark Twain
“Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.”
- —Alan Dean Foster
“Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.”
- —Rabindranath Tagore
“The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site.”
- —FrankLloydWright?
Other wanted:
Twain on letter would've been shorter but didn't have the time
“A book of quotations ... can never be complete.”
- —Robert M. Hamilton
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
- —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Familiar Quotations
“The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
- —Maugham
“I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”
- —Dorothy Parker
“Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.”
- —Simeon Strunsky
“What's the use of a good quotation if you can’t change it?”
- —The Doctor
This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been a real life, you would have been told where to go and what to do.
“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”
- —Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythologyx
1. This is it!
41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
42. What do you know…for sure…anyway?
43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again…
- —from An Eschatological Laundry List: A Partial Register of the 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths, in If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him!, by Sheldon B. Kopp
[did this in 7th grade]
“Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live, but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.”
- —Socrates, in the Apology
“Whenever my life came to a halt, the questions would arise: Why? And what next?”
- —Tolstoy, Confession
If you do not want to learn, then do not ask questions, especially not of yourself.
Oh no, not another learning experience! [find “experience”]
“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches”
- —George Bernard Shaw
“Those who can’t teach, only do!”
- —John Abbe (and the reverse is supposed to be scary)
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
- —Victor Hugo
“The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.”
- —Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, Chapter 1 "Why We Must Disestablish School"
“Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.”
- —B.F. Skinner
“The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later”
- —Aristotle
[but may later be divided again]
“A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”
- —Mahatma Ghandi
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
- —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
- —Thomas Pynchon
“In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man’s questionings is more important than his answers.”
- —Andre Malraux
“I say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody’s answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears.”
- —Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
“I know I have not found the answers to all of my questions. The answers I have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways I am as confused as ever, but I believe that I am confused on a higher level and about more important things.”
- —unknown
“Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.”
- —Mark Twain
“I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.”
- —Galileo, 1612, upon seeing moons orbiting Jupiter through a telescope
“We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic ‘temperature’ are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet ‘as a whole.’“
- —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., The Heart of Matter, 1950
Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.
- —M. K. Gandhi
“Dave lay in the darkness and thought about life. He had learned early on that he would never truly understand anything. The best he could hope for was a working misunderstanding. Through careful refinement, a working misunderstanding might actually lead to successful predictions. This, as he understood it, was called science.”
- —from Slam, by Lewis Shiner, p. 160
“Alternative models are neither right nor wrong, just more or less useful in allowing us to operate in the world and discover more and better options for solving problems.”
- —Andrew Weil, in the 1986 preface to The Natural Mind
“Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.”
- —Brenda Ueland [Find "loudly". Oh, listen to yourself, too :-]
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes).”
- —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.”
- —Aldous Huxley
“The proper condition of the human is not bovine placidity...(it is) the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne.”
- —Brian Swimme, Canticle to the Cosmos
“Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.”
- —Edward Teller
“I think I am a verb.”
- —R. Buckminster Fuller
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”
- —on Richard Feynman’s office chalkboard when he died
“Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”
- —Marshall Mcluhan
“Never express yourself more clearly than you think.”
- —N. Bohr
“We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because ‘two’ is ‘one and one.’ We forget that we have still to make a study of ‘and.’”
- —A. S. Eddington
“When I was in NYC last month I saw a Blaupunkt radio sitting in the middle of a parking space. It had a small label on it, which read ‘No BMW’”
- —Unknown
A specialist is someone who learns more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. A generalist is someone who learns less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything.
- —paraphrase; I think I first read this in E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Skylark series
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
- —T. H. Huxley
“All the limitative Theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Church's Undecidability Theorem, Turing's Halting Problem, Turski's Truth Theorem-- all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that ‘To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which . . . will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described.’”
- —Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel Escher Bach
“Theorems of metamathematics ... suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, . . . it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally . . . . ‘To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which . . . will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described.’”
- —Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel Escher Bach
[Explaining the meaning of various mathematical etc. theorems]
“One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again.”
- —Alvin Toffler, foreword to Order out of Chaos
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
- —H. P. Lovecraft
*
“The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.”
- —Arthur Koestler, Darkness At Noon
The only way to learn about some edges is to go beyond them.
- —Anonymous
"...and may I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannabalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. And finally, necrophilia is right out."
- —Monty Python
“It has been one of the great errors of our time that to think that by thinking about thinking, and then talking about it, we could possibly straighten out and tidy up our minds. There is no delusion more damaging than to get the idea in your head that you understand the functioning of your own brain. Once you acquire such a notion, you run the danger of moving in to take charge, guiding your thoughts, shepherding your mind from place to place, controlling it, making lists of regulations. The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to run itself, and we are obliged to follow it along, trying to keep up with it as best we can. It is all very well to be aware of your awareness, even proud of it, but never try to operate it. You are not up to the job.”
- —Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
And yet...
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- —Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
- —Einstein
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
- —Albert Einstein, ``What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
“A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.”
- —Benjamin Franklin
“In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly, the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning.”
- —H.A. Kramers
That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You To Seek
- —A modern Buddhist book title
“Of the forces which are imperceptible forces, none is greater than that of change...all things are ever in the state of change ... therefore the I of the past is no longer the I of today.”
- —3rd century, Chang-tzû commentary
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
- —Tolstoy
[Thinkpeace cartoon of many people thinking, "but what can one person do?"]
“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.”
- —Irene Peter
“Things never change the same.”
- —Alice Hoeltke
“In the same way as the tree bears the same fruit year after year, but each time new fruit, all lastingly valuable ideas in thinking must always be reborn.”
- —Albert Schweitzer
“Those who will not reason
Perish in the act.
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.”
- —W.H. Auden, Shorts
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
- —William James
“What you do speaks so loudly to me that I cannot hear what you say.”
- —An old Quaker saying
“I look for what needs to be done...after all, that’s how the universe designs itself.”
- —R. Buckminster Fuller [find “universe”]
“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it.
I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against.
I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever
and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
- —Malcolm X
“How do you know that the man in the street don’t care?
And why don’t you care when the man in the street don’t know?”
- —Joe Jackson, in “Man in the Street,” on Big World
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
- —Abraham Lincoln
“It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”
- —H.L. Mencken
“‘You are all a lost generation, ’ Gertrude Stein said. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home.”
- —James Thurber
“We’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy.”
- —Seal, “Crazy”
“Of course, the entire effort is to put oneself outside the ordinary range of what are called statistics.”
- —Stephen Spender
“We’re all Jesus, Buddha, and the Wizard of Oz”
- —XTC, in “Merely a Man,” on Oranges & Lemons
“There’s an old saying: ‘He who plays with fire sometimes throws light on the situation.’”
- —Perry Mason
Luck is the meeting of preparation and opportunity.
- —unknown
“Trying is the internalization of the failure of omnipotence.”
- —Brian O’Shaugnessy
“Try not. Do, or do not.
There is no try.”
- —Yoda
To be is to do.
- —Immanuel Kant
To do is to be.
- —Jean Paul Sartre
Doo-be-doo-be-doo
- —Frank Sinatra
Yabba-dabba-doo
- —Fred Flintstone
One must be something to be able to do something
- —Goethe, conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann 10/20/1828
(sorry, Goethe -- isn't it just as true to say that one must do something to be able to be something?)
We do not inherit the earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
“Healing the universe is an inside job”
- —Thomas, in the movie Mindwalk
“The human person is the sum total of [one] 15 billion year [chain] of unbroken evolution now thinking about itself”
- —Teilhard de Chardin, 194?
“We’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”
- —Rodney King
“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret of happiness. Then if you’re not a good mixer you can always fall back on your own company.”
- —Robert Morley
“Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities of which they were previously unaware.”
- —David Armistead
If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing.
- —From Zimbabwe?
The secret of walking on water, is knowing where the rocks are!
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Nor do the children of men[sic] as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the longer run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- —Helen Keller
“The spirits that I summoned up
I now can't rid myself of.”
- —Goethe, The Sorceror’s Apprentice (1797)
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
- —Jack London
“The proper condition of the human is not bovine placidity...(it is) the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne.”
- —Brian Swimme, _Canticle to the Cosmos_
“Whatever you can do
or dream you can
begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Begin it now.”
- —Goethe
*
“There is nothing so practical as a good theory”
- —origin debated?
*
“The difference between theory and practice is bigger in theory than in practice”
“A diamond was once a piece of coal that did well under pressure”
- —Bill Smith, of the Buffalo Bills [from elseone, I know]
Reality is for people who can’t handle philosophy.
Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
- —Rudyard Kipling
“The last time I was in the States, I saw a young guy in Des Moines, Iowa (for Jesus sake, Iowa!) wearing a T-shirt that said:
- ‘Reality is a crutch for people who can’t deal with science fiction.’
At that moment, I realized that the Revolution was over and my side has won.”
- —Robert Anton Wilson, Semiotext(e) SF, ~1990
"Everything is Science Fiction,
and I ought to know."
--The Cars
"Just a few pesky life forms, getting fresh with my ship."
- —Captain Gideon, Excalibur
“Mr. Kim; we're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job.”
- —Captain Janeway, Voyager
“My dear Amanda,” intoned the family lawyer, “it has come to my attention that you are increasingly seen in the company of extremely weird individuals.”
Brushing a cigar ash from the attorney’s somber necktie, Amanda corrected him. “There is no such thing as a weird human being. It’s just that some people require more understanding than others.”
- —Amanda, in Another Roadside Attraction, by Tom Robbins
“My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)...The most important job of any man is bossing other men.”
- —J. R. R. Tolkien, in a letter to Christopher Tolkien
“Anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off.”
- —Net
“Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but *threatening*, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.”
- —Nick Szabo
Anarchy is...
"people working together without someone on top saying, 'I know more than you do'"
- —Rich "Tet" Tentenbaum
"elements interacting without coercion from the holons they are a part of"
what's the difference between power-over and domination?
"elements interacting without restrictive limits from the holons they are a part of"
"elements interacting without being affected by the holons they are a part of"
The slippery slope that destroys libertarianism?
“They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.”
- —Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.”
- —S. J. Gould
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
- —Edwin Markham (1852-1940)
“Rare is the person who can weigh the faults of others without putting his thumb on the scales.”
- —Byron J. Langenfeld
“We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.”
- —M.K.G.
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
- —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.”
- —Anatol Rapoport
“Arms are instruments of ill omen. ... When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish. There is no glory in victory, and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of men. ... When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe mourning rites.”
- —Lao-tzu (ca. 500 B. C.)
“I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”
- —Mahatma Gandhi
I want to live in a house by the side of the road
- Where the race of Man goes by;
- The ones who are good,
The ones who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not take the scorner’s seat,
- Nor hurl the cynics bann;
- I want to live in a house by the side of the road,
And be a friend to Man.
- —Sam Walter Foss
*
“All the world is my homeland
All its people my kinsfolk”
- —Tamil couplet from 2nd century B.C (_Purananuru_)
“When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church—and there was nobody left to be concerned.”
- —Martin Niemoller, 14 October 1968, Congressional Record p. 31636
“When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I don’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I’m innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I don’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment and I can’t say anything at all.”
- —unknown
“We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them.”
- —Benjamin Ricketson Tucker
[2000 update in U.S.--a lot that punish them]
"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice that make philanthropy necessary."
- —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create,
so that he can add to what he's been given.”
- —Anton Chekhov
[Need an accept-the-world-as-it-is quote]
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
- —Dom Helder Camara
“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, (hu)mankind will have discovered fire.”
- —Teilhard de Chardin
“If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we’ve destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don’t you think we might see each other once or twice?”
- —Jonathan to Sullivan in Jonathan Livingston Seagull
The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, “Where the FUCK is my roof???”
“In western music we divide time — as if you were to take a length of time and slice it the way you slice a loaf of bread. In Indian music (and all other non-western music with which I’m familiar), you take small units, or ‘beats’, and string them together to make up larger time values.”
- —Philip Glass
To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence—this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.
- —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Those who love love, and those who love themselves, cannot wait. Those who love another can and do.”
- — Theodore Sturgeon, from Sturgeon in Orbit [what story?]
“Walk carefully, well loved one,
- walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.”
- —Ursula K. Le Guin, in Always Coming Home
The goal of Capitalism: The more money you have the more influence you have.
The goal of Democracy: Everyone has the same amount of influence.
- —Me
“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”
- —Francis Bacon
[Later note: Equal influence doesn't have to be the same thing as identical roles in society (cf Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron"). One of the main activities of whatever forces represent the equal influence at smaller, closer-to-decision-making levels should be in regard to what roles people will be playing. ![:]](/web/20020301023933im_/http://www.ourpla.net/pikie/smile3.gif)
Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
(reference, American colloquial: When the sh*t hits the fan, meaning when the bad consequence happens)
“Feminism is the radical concept that women are people.”
- —Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler
Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property.
- —United Nations report, 1980
“Of all the stupid things I could have thought this was the worst:
I started to believe that I was born at 17.
And all the stupid things, the letters and the broken verse
stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer they’d always been.”
- —Joe Jackson, in “Home Town,” on Big World
*
Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Mr. Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea!
[Music—fill this space where a quote could have been with music that makes you reflect, or inspires you]
“I offered a weekend workshop for teachers on sex education. It included a panel of teenagers, some heterosexual and some gay. ... After the workshop, many teachers who had attended began inviting gay speakers to their high school sex education classes. ... Soon my students were getting fired all over the Bay Area.”
- —Fran Peavey, Heart Politics
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
- —Shirley Temple
“…Clean up complexion, soften eye lines, soften smile line, add color to lips, trim chin, remove neck lines, soften line under ear lobe, add highlights to earrings, add blush to cheek, clean up neck line, remove stray hair, remove hair strands from dress, adjust color and add hair on top of head, add dress on side to create better line... Total: $1,525.00.”
- —The invoice for retouching the cover photo of Michelle Pfeiffer in the December, 1990, issue of Esquire magazine, obtained by Harper’s. The photo’s caption reads, “What Michelle Pfeiffer Needs…Is Absolutely Nothing.”
“Television—a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.”
- —Ernie Kovacs
“How can you tell when a network President is lying?
His lips move.”
- —Max Headroom, 80s short-lived cult hit TV show character. It was shuttled around to different times, and even different networks, then quietly dropped.
“The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.”
- —Vannevar Bush (1940s)
Humans…God’s attempt to pass the Turing test.
I am Pentium of Borg. You will be approximated.
I am Homer of Borg. You will be assimi—ooh, donuts!
“The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.”
- —John Gilmore
“Flame all you want; mine’s still bigger.”
- —Tom expresses the essence of Usenet.
“The Net & Computers are going to blow your mind periodically for the rest of your life. Get used to it.”
- —John Abbe
p.s. and watch as medical technology and nanotech get rolling...
p.p.s. And let's act to keep our wisdom improving as fast as our technology, eh?
96-97? (2000 remembered to add back computers--they were there first...)
“You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it.”
- —Charles Babbage
[His "engine" was a mechanical computer. His country was England. The year was ?? (late 1800s). Later partial attempts suggest that if built the machine could have worked, but for their inability to produce some of the parts accurately enough.]
“I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however possible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.”
- —Mary Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein
Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
- —Anonymous
“I was wrong. This changes everything.”
- —Maynard James Keenan
Recursion: If you get the point, stop, else see Recursion.
Infinite recursion: See Infinite recursion.
- —Ammon Skidmore?
"Computer: disobey me."
- —Matt Fields, A.Mus.D.
[Computer's response: Right now, or more often, I mean, uh, how often?]
If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back to you, it is yours.
If it doesn’t, it never was.
If you love something, set it on fire.
If it survives, then it is yours.
If it doesn’t, bon appetit.
- —Douglas Wolk
"I didn't do it nobody saw me do it you can't prove anything"
- —Bart Simpson
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
- —Buckaroo Banzai
“Space is merely a device to keep everything from being in the same spot.”
- —Tom Robbins
Me: On the Net, is everything happening at the same time in the same place?
“The philosophy pursued by The Harvard-Radcliffe Fund may be summed up by an old maxim: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
- —from a Harvard-Radcliffe Fund flyer
“Labor day, shmabor day. What a dumb day.
To hire some jerk,
then send him away,
to celebrate work
by playing all day.”
- —Garfield
“I have always found it strange that a nation whose prosperity is based entirely upon cheap immigrant labour should be so unrelentingly xenophobic.”
- —1876, Gore Vidal
“I will heel you,
I will save your sole,
I will even dye for you.”
- —in shoe store window in Cambridge, MA, USA
A company is known by the people it keeps
- —Anonymous
“We are making progress towards our desired completion goals!”
- —John Walker
# Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
“Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives itself from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
- —from Monty Python And The Quest For The Holy Grail
“…Interior Minister Ehud Barak said Monday he would review police files to consider barring Jewish extremists from entering Israel following the Rabin assassination.”
- —Reuters, 11/20/95
Pro is to Con as progress is to Congress
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
- —George Washington
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country.”
- —Thomas Jefferson, 1816
“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin.”
- —Malcolm X
“Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.”
- —Pericles of Athens, circa 430 BC
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
- —A. J. Liebling
“‘Everyone in your culture knows that the world wasn't created for jellyfish or salmon or iguanas or gorillas. It was created for man.’
‘That's right.’
Ishmael fixed me with a sardonic eye. ‘And this is not mythology?’”
- —from Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael
Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 11 Nov. 1947
So when do we get something even better?
The Intelligent Human’s Guide to Cows and Politics
Socialism — You have two cows—give one to your neighbor.
Communism — You have two cows. Give them both to the government. Government gives you milk.
Fascism — Government shoots you and takes cows.
New Dealism — Government shoots one cow, milks the other and pours the milk down the sink.
Capitalism — Slaughter cow. Compete with McDonald?’s.
Anarchism — Keep cows. Shoot government. Steal another cow.
Conservatism — Freeze milk. Nuke cows.
Liberalism — Give milk back to cows. Let them escape.
Progressivism — Research cow intelligence. Ask for their input.
Some Singularitarians promote intelligence of computers. What if it turns out UpLift? (see DavidBrin?, VernorVinge?, AmericanFlagg?) is easier than ArtificialIntelligence?
"It was paradoxically the emergence of popular government that expanded the scope of what authorities could demand. The People by definition could not oppress itself; hence its wishes - as expressed by elective assemblies or rulers in its name - were absolute. The growth of state power has gone hand in hand with the expansion of populist claims."
- —Henry Kissenger, address before the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, July 31, 1980
So how do we have an activist, and free government? Or let the activism do it's accountability/feedback? Or rather, how to institutionalize openness?
“Jesus was at a disco and having trouble dancing, so he said ‘Help! I’ve risen and I can’t get down!’“
Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound! He shoots, HE SCOOORES
“I have often had the impression that, to penguins, man is just another penguin—different, less predictable, occasionally violent, but tolerable company when he sits still and minds his own business.”
- —Bernard Stonehouse
“Rather, she [ Death ] simply is the Ultimate Hostess who tells you when your table’s ready. It's up to other powers what section you’re seated in (smoking or non-smoking).”
- —John C. Straffin
“Ella, Ella, Ella... Never knock on Death’s door. Ring the bell and run away!
- Death *really* hates that.”
- —Doctor, Doctor
“The best break anybody ever gets is in bein' alive in the first place. An’ you don't unnerstan’ what a perfect deal it is until you realizes that you ain’t gone be stuck with it forever, either.”
- —Porkypine (in Walt Kelly’s Pogo)
Do i understand these?
“The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”
- —Horace Walpole
“Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”
--G. K. Chesterton, _Tremendous Trifles_ (1909)
(there was a Pikie-limit to prevent overloading i guess)