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Post by Tamrin on Feb 27, 2014 9:06:48 GMT 10
Barking dogs occasionally bite, but laughing men hardly ever shoot
A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one
Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species
Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value
We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious warKonrad LorenzAustrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist (Nobel 1973) (Died this day 1989) I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man: It is we
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 27, 2014 9:07:45 GMT 10
I can speak Esperanto like a native
Listen, someone's screaming in agony — fortunately I speak it fluently
Contraceptives should be used on all conceivable occasions
How long was I in the army? Five foot eleven
A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy
I'm not afraid of dying I just don't want to be there when it happensSir ‘Spike’ Milligan, KBEIndian-born, Irish comedian and writer (Goon Show) (Died this day 2002) I told them I was ill( Spike’s self-composed epitaph)
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 27, 2014 18:23:46 GMT 10
The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase
I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon
Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great
More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted
This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approx.- imately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000
The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non- users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenryWilliam F. Buckley, Jr.American author and journalist ( National Review) (Died this day 2008) Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:32:22 GMT 10
Friday’s Quotes:The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity
I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulnessMichel de MontaigneFrench essayist and philosopher (Born this day 1533) I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:33:12 GMT 10
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety
When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy
The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can't have both
Listen, little boy. In this business, there's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it
Time is a circus, always packing up and moving awayBen HechtUS screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist (Born this day 1893) Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:34:08 GMT 10
Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly
If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away
I try to identify myself with the atoms ... I ask what I would do If I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom
When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect — but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate – may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical – always think for yourself
You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense — the result of judgment and experience — which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up
Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life
Life ... is a relationship between moleculesLinus PaulingAmerican scientist, peace activist, author and educator (Born this day 1901) Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences — and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on — whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:35:08 GMT 10
Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal
My single pair of eyes contain the universe they see; Their mirrored multi- plicity is packed into a hollow body where I reflect the many, in my one
Then, in a flush of rose, she woke and her eyes that opened swam in blue through her rose flesh that dawned. From her dew of lips, the drop of one word fell like the first of fountains: murmured 'Darling', upon my ears the song of the first bird. 'My dream becomes my dream,' she said, 'come true...'
They think how one life hums, revolves and toils, one cog in a golden singing hive...
A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience. Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true. Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside. His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can doSir Stephen Spender, CBE English poet, novelist and essayist (Born this day 1909) I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truth- fully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me – and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:35:52 GMT 10
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it
Deductivism in mathematical literature and inductivism in scientific papers are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. The theatrical illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes. In real life discovery and justification are almost always different processes
For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very preceisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping
If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs
The intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or false
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poets–scientists and philosopher–scientists and even a few mystics ... and most people who are in fact scientists could easily have been something else instead
Scientific reasoning is a kind of dialogue between the possible and the actual, between what might be and what is in fact the caseSir Peter MedawarEnglish zoologist, immunologist (Nobel 1953) (Born this day 1915) Heredity proposes and development disposes
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:37:47 GMT 10
Ideas are, in truth, force
In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact
Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet
The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little traditionHenry JamesUS-British writer ( Bostonians) (Died this day 1916) So here it is at last, the distinguished thing(last words)
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 28, 2014 7:38:45 GMT 10
They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like
Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator
Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so
Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another
This world is suchier than we are, and the best thing to do is keep moving and find your keys
At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journeyLemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)US author ( A Series of Unfortunate Events) (Born this day 1970) If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf
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