- I feel that one cannot stress too strongly the importance of the ELITE in the various branches of SCIENCE. One can observe the rise and fall of different branches of the NEUROSCIENCES in a country according to the kind of LEADERSHIP that is provided. I am not of course claiming that without elite leadership nothing can be accomplished scientifically. There could well be competent science, but it would be unimaginative. So, of course, is the great bulk of RESEARCH WORK carried out in any country. It is uninspired, but nevertheless valuable because it fills in gaps in the knowledge of a subject. Without an elite, there is little exploration of new and fruitful lines of development. This is particularly evident if one acts as an editor of a journal or goes to many scientific conferences. Without the leadership of the elite, I think that there is a danger in some fields of investigation of becoming bogged down in routine procedures. The scientists seem to get into some rut of technical performance, where they competently carry out research projects in a field which is entirely familiar to them. Of course they work in a field in which they have all the equipment available in the laboratory and all the technical and experimental know-how; nevertheless this situation does not make for the good training of young investigators.
- I would define SCIENCE as the systematic attempt to understand and comprehend the natural world. It is a determination to enter deeply into the natural world, not just superficially, but to achieve a rational expression in LANGUAGE and MATHEMATICAL SYMBOLISM of the order and beauty of operation that lies behind all natural phenomena. This is what the aim of SCIENCE is. Its scope is not just the external world. The scope of science includes ourselves. By that I mean that all aspects of our own experiences of ourselves - our perceptions, imaginings, emotions and actions - everything properly comes into the purview of science.
- SCIENCE is a very specialized kind of discipline. It flourishes best under special conditions of society. It is sharply distinguished from TECHNOLOGY. Science is the effort to understand NATURAL PHENOMENA, motivated primarily by intrinsic interest, not by utility. On the contrary, technology is an effort to apply empirical scientific knowledge to some useful purpose. Science flourishes when there is freedom to exercise to the full the two aspects of the SCIENTIFIC METHOD: on the one hand, creative imagination must seek to build HYPOTHESES of the utmost generality extending beyond existing knowledge; on the other hand, experimental investigation must subject these hypotheses to the most rigorous empirical testing.
- It is important to draw a sharp distinction between SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY, or APPLIED SCIENCE as it is sometimes called. I am not going to say which has the higher status, but it is necessary to be clear about these two categories, although the same person can be both a scientist and a technologist. He can wear, as it were, different hats for different occasions, but what he does on these two occasions is quite different. There are TECHNOLOGISTS in many countries where there are no SCIENTISTS. In fact all countries have technologists; even countries in the Stone Age, for example, have experts in the manufacture of stone axes.
- The SCIENTIST tries to understand or comprehend the natural world as he experiences it, using for this purpose HYPOTHESES which are tested under specially designed experimental conditions in which most elaborate scientific instruments are often employed. Yet, in the end, no matter how complex the apparatus is, the information that it delivers has to be looked at and observed by a scientist, who must examine it critically in relation to his hypotheses, and then, perhaps, reformulate his hypotheses. the essence of what a scientist does it to imagine and to EXPLAIN what lies behind phenomena, in other words to try to comprehend the natural world. On the other hand, the technologist is utilizing already confirmed knowledge about the natural world for practical purposes.
- The aim of the TECHNOLOGIST is to apply scientific knowledge and empirical knowledge in some useful way. He may be designing and constructing SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT. I am a technologist when so engaged. Technologists are responsible for all the marvelous inventions that have transformed the conditions of our life. Think of the spectrum of revolutions in the means of communication, in the materials for all purposes, and in electronics; think of all the new discoveries and inventions relating to medical practice, to agriculture and food, to the chemical industry, and to computers. This human activity is quire different from that of SCIENCE, although it utilizes or even exploits the discoveries of science. Of course, a technologist has to have a wide knowledge, imagination, and high intelligence, just as does a scientist. I am not underrating the nature of his performance; I am just saying that it is different from that of the scientist. The difference is a difference in objectives.
- . . . It has been important to present the most recent concepts on the way in which our knowledge of the structure and function of the brain leads to hypotheses of the brain-mind interaction in perception, in memory, in voluntary action and in all the manifestations of self-consciousness. There would be no HUMAN MYSTERY if the HUMAN BRAIN were no more than a chimpanzee brain, or even a hominid brain!
- The PARANORMAL thing of all I can move my finger when I so will it. The MIND is the problem to explain in any PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL investigation.
- The shell must be CRACKED APART if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you want to DISCOVER NATURE'S NAKEDNESS YOU MUST DESTROY ITS SYMBOLS, and the farther you get in, the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself there you must stay.
- To be a proper abode for God and fit for God to act in, a man should also be FREE from all things and actions, both INWARDLY and OUTWARDLY.
- The EYE by which I see GOD is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and god's eye are one and the same - one in seeing, one in knowing, and one in loving.
- Allthings are a mere NOTHING, O do not say that they are slight of that they are anything, but that they are a MERE NOTHING.
- Nothing hinders the soul's knowledge of god as much as TIME and SPACE, for time and space are fragments, whereas GOD IS ONE! And therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know him above time and outside space; for god is neither this nor that, as are these manifold things. GOD IS ONE!
- If you LOVE yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is like God and man. Thus he is a great and righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally.
- INDETERMINANCY, complementarity, non-causality are not modes of being in the physical world, but systems for describing it in a convenient way.
INDETERMINACY, complementarity, non-causality are not modes of being in the physical world, but systems for describing it in a convenient way.
- We cannot pretend to offer PROOFS. Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. In PHYSICS we are generally content to sacrifice before the lesser shrine of PLAUSIBILITY.
And even the pure mathematician - that stern logician - reluctantly allows himself some prejudgements; he is never quite CONVINCED that the scheme of mathematics is flawless, and mathematical logic has undergone revolutions as profound as the revolution of physical theory. We are all alike stumblingly pursuing an ideal beyond our search. In SCIENCE we sometimes have CONVICTIONS as to the right solution of a problem which we cherish but cannot justify; we are influenced by some innate sense of the fitness of things. So too there may come to us convictions in the spiritual sphere which our nature bids us hold to. I have given an example of one such conviction in the spiritual sphere which our nature bids us hold to. I have given an example of one such conviction which is rarely disputed - that surrender to the mystic influence of a scene of natural beauty is right and proper for a human spirit, although it would have been deemed an unpardonable eccentricity in the "observer" contemplated in earlier chapters. RELIGIOUS CONVICTION is often described in somewhat analogous terms as a surrender; it is not to be enforced by argument on those who do not feel its claim in their own nature.
- Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a DOOR. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.
- The future is a combination of the causal influences of the past together with unpredictable elements - unpredictable not merely because it is impracticable to obtain the data of prediction, but because no data connected causally with our experience exist. It will be necessary to defend so remarkable a change of opinion at some length. Meanwhile we may note that science thereby withdraws its moral opposition to FREE-WILL. Those who maintain a deterministic theory of mental activity must do so as the outcome of their study of the mind itself and not with the idea that they are thereby making it more comfortable with out experimental knowledge of the laws of inorganic nature.
- At present we can notice the contrast that the LAWS which we recognise as man-made are characterised by continuity, whereas the laws to which the mind as yet lays no claim are characterised by atomicity. The QUANTUM THEORY with its avoidance of fractions and insistence on INTEGRAL units seems foreign to any schemes which we should be likely subconsciously to have imposed as a frame for natural phenomena. Perhaps our final conclusion as to the world of PHYSICS will resemble Kronecker's view of PURE MATHEMATICS (cf. Kronecker).
- The world which we have built from the relation-structure is no doubt doomed to be pulled about a good deal as our knowledge progresses. The QUANTUM THEORY shows that some radical change is impending. But I think that our building exercise has at any rate widened our minds to the possibilities and has given us a different orientation towards the idea of physical LAW> the points which I Stress are:
Firstly, a strictly quantitative SCIENCE can arise from a basis which is purely qualitative. The comparability that has to be assumed axiometically is a merely qualitative discrimination of likeness and unlikeness.
Secondly, the laws which we have hitherto regarded as the most typical of the basal structure (if there are any) are likely to be of a different type from any yet conceived.
Thirdly, the mind has by its selective power fitted the processes of Nature into a frame of law of a pattern largely of its own choosing; and in the discovery of this system of law the mind may be regarded as regaining from Nature that which the mind has put into Nature.
- Perhaps a better way of expressing this selective influence of MIND on the LAWS of NATURE is to say that values are created by the mind. All the "light and shade" in our CONCEPTION of the world of PHYSICS comes in this way from the mind, and cannot be explained without reference to the characteristics of consciousness.
- . . . The law that entropy always increases - the second law of THERMODYNAMICS - holds, I think, the supreme position among the LAWS OF NATURE>
- . . . Concern with TRUTH is one of those things which make up the SPIRITUAL NATURE of Man. There are other constituents to our spiritual nature which are perhaps as self-evalent; but it is not so easy to form an admission of their evidence. We cannot recognise a problem of experience without at the same time recognising ourselves as truth-seekers involved in the problem. The strange association of soul and body - of responsibility towards truth with a particular group of carbon components - is a problem in which we naturally feel intense interest; but it is not an anxious interest, although the existence of a spiritual significance of experience were hanging in the balance. That significance is to be regarded rather as a datum of the problem; and the solution must fit the data; we must not alter the data to fit an alleged solution.
- SCIENCE aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace EXPERIENCE> It is not at all necessary that every individual symbol that is used should represent something in common experience or even something explicable in terms of common experience. The man in the street is always making this demand for concrete explanation of the things referred to in science; but of necessity he must be disappointed. It is like one experience on ;learning to read. That which is written in a book is symbolic of a story in real life. The whole intension of the book is that ultimately a reader will identify some symbol, say BREAD, with one of the conceptions of familiar life. But it is mischievous to attempt such identifications prematurely, before the letters are strung into words and the words into sentences. The symbols A is not the counterpart of anything in familiar life. To the child the letter A would seem horribly abstract; so we give him a familiar conception along with it. "A was an Archer who shot a frog." This tides over his immediate difficulty; but he cannot make serious progress with word-building so long as Archers, Butchers, Captains, dance round the letters. The letters are ABSTRACT, and sooner or later he has to realise it. In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain which one ELECTRON is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the ABC of PHYSICS".
- . . . We cannot assimilate laws of thought to natural laws; they are laws which OUGHT to be obeyed, not laws which MUST be obeyed; and the physicist must accept laws of thought before he accepts natural law. "ought" takes us outside CHEMISTRY and PHYSICS> It concerns something which wants or esteems sugar, not chalk, sense, not nonsense. A physical machine cannot esteem or want anything; whatever is fed into it it will chew up according to the laws of its physical machinery. That which in the physical world shadows the nonsense in the mind affords no ground for its condemnation. In a world of aether and electrons we might perhaps encounter nonsense; we could not encounter damned nonsense.
- SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY is like the fitting together of the pieces of a great jig-saw puzzle; a revolution of science does not mean that the pieces already arranged and interlinked have to be dispersed; it means that in fitting on fresh pieces we have had to revise our impression of what the puzzle-picture is going to be like. One day you ask the scientist how he is getting on; he replies: "Firstly, I have very nearly finished this piece of blue sky." Another day you ask how the sky is progressing and are told, "I have added a lot more, but it was sea, not sky, there is a boat floating on the top of it". Perhaps next time it will have turned out to be a parasol upside down; but our friend is still enthusiastically delighted with the progress he is making. The scientist has his guesses as to how the finished picture will work out; he depends largely on these in his search for other pieces to fit; but his guesses are modified from time to time by unexpected developments as the fitting proceeds. These revolutions of thought as to the final picture do not cause the scientist to lose faith in his handiwork, for he is aware that the completed portion is growing steadily. Those who look over his shoulder and use the present partially developed picture for purposes outside science, do so at their own risk.
- SCIENCE is an attempt to read the cryptogram of EXPERIENCE; it sets in order the facts of sensory experience of human beings. Everyone will agree that this attempt has met with considerable success; but it does not start quite at the beginning of the Problems of Experience.
- What is the ultimate truth about ourselves? Various answers suggest themselves. We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery - puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pulls the strings beneath. But there is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question. Whatever else there may be in our nature, RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS TRUTH is one of the attributes.
- We recognise that the type of knowledge after which PHYSICS is striving is much too narrow and specialised to constitute a complete UNDERSTANDING of the environment of the human spirit. A great many aspects of our ordinary life and activity take us outside the outlook of physics. For the most part no controversy arises as to the admissibility and importance of these aspects; we take their validity for granted and adept our life to them without any deep self-questioning. Any discussion as the whether they are compatible with the truth revealed by physics is purely academic; for whatever the outcome of the discussion, we are not likely to sacrifice them, knowing as we do at the outset that the nature of Man would be incomplete without such outlets. It is therefore somewhat of an anomaly that among the many extra-physical aspects of experience RELIGION alone should be singled out as specially in need of reconciliation with the knowledge contained in SCIENCE. Why should anyone suppose that all that matters to human nature can be assessed with a measuring rod or expressed in terms of the intersections of world-lines? If defence is needed, the defence of a religious outlook must, I think, take the same form as the defence of an aesthetic outlook. The sanction seems to lie in an INNER FEELING of growth or achievement found in the exercise of the aesthetic faculty and equally in the exercise of the religious faculty. It is akin to the inner feeling of the scientist which persuades him that the exercise of another faculty of the mind, namely its REASONING POWER, we reach something after which the human spirit is bound to strive.
- >. . . The process of the external world cannot be described in terms of familiar images; whether we describe them by words or by symbols their intrinsic nature remains unknown. But they are the vehicle of a scheme of relationship which can be described by NUMBER, and so give rise to those numerical measures (pointer-reading) which are the data from which all knowledge of the external universe is inferred.
- To realise the insignificance of our race before the majesty of the universe may be healthy; but it brings to us an alarming thought. For MAN is the typical custodian of certain qualities or illusions, which make a vital difference to the significance of things. He displays PURPOSE in an inorganic world of chance. He can represent TRUTH, RiIGHTEOUSNESS, SACRIFICE. In him there flickers for a few brief years a spark from the DIVINE SPIRIT. Are these of as little account in the universe as he is?
- Our account of the EXTERNAL WORLD (when purged of the INVENTIONS of the story teller in consciousness) must necessarily be a "Jabberwocky" of unknowable actors executing unknowable actions. How in these conditions can we arrive at any KNOWLEDGE at all? We must seek a knowledge which is neither of actors nor of actions, but of which the actors and actions are a vehicle. The knowledge we can acquire is knowledge of a structure or pattern contained in the sections. I think that the artist may partly understand what I mean. )Perhaps that is the explanation of the Jabberwockies that we see hung on the walls of Art exhibitions). In mathematics we describe such knowledge as knowledge of GROUP structure.
- There are thus two reasons why the ULTIMATE CONSTITUENTS of the real world must be of an unfamiliar nature. Firstly, all familiar objects are of a much too complex character. Secondly, familiar objects belong not to the real world of physics, but to a much earlier stage in the synthesis of appearances. The ULTIMATE ELEMENTS in a theory of the world must be of a nature impossible to define in terms recognisable to the mind.
- We have found a STRANGE FOOTPRINT on the shores of the unknown. We have devised PROFOUND THEORIES, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
- Man is slightly nearer to the ATOM than to the STAR . . . From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist.
- I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the STARS leads through the ATOM; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
- . . . It is one thing for the HUMAN MIND to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which is has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the MIND may be irrational and we can never succeed in formulating them. This is, however, only a remote possibility; probably if they were really irrational it would not have been possible to make the limited progress that has been achieved. But if the laws of quanta do indeed differentiate the actual world from other worlds possible to the mind, we may expect the task of formulating them to be far harder than anything yet accomplished by physics.
- To suppose that NEWTON's great scientific reputation is tossing up and down on these latter-day revolutions is to compare SCIENCE and OMNISCIENCE.
- Of we are not content with the dull accumulations of experimental facts, if we make any deductions as generalizations, if we seek for any theory to guide us, some degree of SPECULATION cannot be avoided.
- When an investigator has developed a FORMULA which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say "Foiled again! I can find out no more about NATURE along this line."
- SCIENCE is one thing, and wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cur theory own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word EXPLOSION alone, of which the ancients knew nothing.
- I do not think that the whole of the CREATION has been staked on the one planet where we live.
There's nothing surer, The RICH get Rich and the POOR get POORER, In the meantime, in between time, Ain't we got FUN.
- It strikes me as unfair and even in bad taste, to select a few . . . for boundless ADMIRATION attributing superhuman power of mind and character to them. This has been my fate . . .
- The release of ATOM POWER has changed everything except our way of THINKING, and thus we are being DRIVEN unarmed towards a CATASTROPHE . . . The solution of this problem lies in the heart of MANKIND.
- About ten years ago I spoke with Einstein about the astonishing fact that so many ministers of various denominations are strongly interested in the theory of relativity. Einstein said that according to his estimation there are more CLERGYMEN interested in relativity than physicists. A little puzzled I asked him how he could explain this strange fact. He answered, a little smiling: "Because clergymen are interested in the GENERAL LAWS of NATURE and physicists, very often, are not."
- Another day Frank spoke with Einstein about a certain physicist who had very little success in his research work. Mostly he attacked problems which offered tremendous difficulties. He applied penetrating analysis and succeeded only in discovering more and more difficulties. By most of his colleagues he was not rated very highly. Einstein, however, said about him: "I admire this type of man. I have little patience with SCIENTISTS who take a board of wood, 1ook for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
- The normal adult never bothers his head about SPACE-TIME PROBLEMS. Everything there is to be thought about, in his opinion, has already been done in early CHILDHOOD. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about SPACE and Time when I was already grown up. In consequence, I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary CHILD would have done.
- The most INCOMPREHENSIBLE thing about the world is its COMPREHENSIBILITY. Alternatively . The most INCOMPREHENSIBLE thing about the universe is that it is COMPREHENSIBLE.
- CONCEPTS can never be regarded as logical derivatives of sense impression. But didactic and heuristic objectives make such a notion inevitable. Moral: it is impossible to get anywhere without sinning against reason: in other words, one cannot build a house or a bridge without the use of a scaffolding which, of course, is not part of structure.
- It is quite true that our CONVICTIONS can best be supported
by experience and by clear thinking. In this respect one must agree
without reservation with the extreme rationalist. The weakness of
latter's conception, however, is that those convictions which are
necessary and decisive in our behaviour and judgements are NOT built
up solely by this sound SCIENTIFIC approach.
For the SCIENTIFIC method can only tell us how facts are interrelated and how they determine one another. To strive after such objective knowledge is one of man's most valuable attributes and you will surely not think that I wish to belittle the achievements and heroic efforts of men in the field. But it is equally clear that KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS does NOT IMMEDIATELY show the way to what OUGHT TO BE. One may have complete knowledge of what is and yet be unable to deduce from it what the goal of human endeavour should be.
- The COSMIC RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
- Buddhism, as we have learnt from the wonderful writing of
Schopenhauer, contains a strong element of COSMIC RELIGIOUS FEELING.
It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the NOTHINGNESS of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a SINGLE SIGNIFICANT WHOLE."
- The reciprocal relationship of EPISTEMOLOGY and SCIENCE is of
noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology
without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without
epistemology is - insofar as it is thinkable at all - primitive and
muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist who is seeking a
clear system, fought his way through such a system, than he is
inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of
his SYSTEM and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The
SCIENTIST, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for
epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the
epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions,
which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to
let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his
conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He
therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of
unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks
to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist
insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free
inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is
empirically given); as positivist in sofar as he considers his concepts
and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a
logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may
even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the
viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool
of his research.
All of this is splendidly elucidated in Lenzen's and Northrop's essays. . . .
- EXPERIMENT alone can decide on TRUTH ... But the AXIOMATIC BASIS of PHYSICS cannot be extracted from EXPERIMENT.
- More careful reflection teaches us, however, that the special theory of relativity does not compel us to deny ETHER. We may assume the existence of an ether; only we must give up describing a definite state of motion to it, i.e., we must by abstraction take from it the last mechanical characteristic which Lorentz had still left it .... [There] is a weighty argument to be adduced in favour of the ether hypothesis. To deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view. ... According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there would not only be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and -clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.
- A leader (Mahatma Gandhi) of his people, unsupported by any
outward authority: a politician whose success rests not upon craft
or mastery of technical devices, but simply on the convincing power
of his personality; a victorious fighter who has always scorned the use
of force; a MAN of WISDOM and HUMILITY, armed with resolve and
inflexible consistency, who has devoted all his strength to the
uplifting of his people and the betterment of their lot; a man who
confronted the brutality of Europe with the DIGNITY of the SIMPLE
HUMAN BEING, and thus at all times risen superior.
GENERATIONS TO COME, IT MAY BE, WILL SCARCE BELIEVE THAT SUCH A ONE AS THIS EVER IN FLESH AND BLOOD WALKED UPON THIS EARTH.
- It is an encouraging symptom of out time - often decried as materialistic - that it chooses its HEROES from individuals whose goals lie completely in the INTELLECTUAL and SPIRITUAL sphere."
- The IDEALS which have always shone before me are GOODNESS,
BEAUTY and TRUTH. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never,
appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be
sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Possession, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a SIMPLE and UNASSUMING MANNER OF LIFE is best for every one, both for the body and the mind.
- For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an ILLUSION, even if a stubborn one.
- IMAGINATION is more important than KNOWLEDGE. For KNOWLEDGE. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a factor in SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
- Lack of IMAGINATION circumscribed our affections, and our task was to FREE OURSELVES and EMBRACE ALL NATURE. A suitably tall order.
- The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained LIBERATION from the SELF.
- What is the meaning of human LIFE, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a RELIGION. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life.
- How can it be that MATHEMATICS, a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of REALITY?
- But the creative principle resides in MATHEMATICS. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that PURE THOUGHT can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
- EXPERIENCE remains, of course, the sole criterion of the physical utility of a MATHEMATICAL CONSTRUCTION. But the creative principle resides in MATHEMATICS.
- As far as the MATHEMATICAL THEOREMS refer to reality, they are not sure, and as far as they are sure, they do not refer to reality . . . The progress entailed by AXIOMATIC consists in the clean-cut separation of the logical form and the realistic and intuitive contents. . . . The AXIOMS are voluntary creations of the human MIND . . . . To this interpretation of GEOMETRY I attach great importance for should I not have been acquainted with it, I would never have been able to develop the theory of relativity.
- Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable MATHEMATICAL IDEAS. I am convinced that we can discover by purely MATHEMATiCAL CONSTRUCTIONS the concepts and laws connecting them with each other, which furnish the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. EXPERIENCE may suggest the appropriate mathematical concepts, but they most certainly cannot be deduced from it. Experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of the utility of a MATHEMATICAL CONSTRUCTION. But the creative principle resides in MATHEMATICS. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can can grasp REALITY as the ancients dreamed.
- The strange conclusion to which we have come is this - that now it appears that space will have to be regarded as a primary thing and that MATTER is derived from it, so to speak, as a secondary result. Space is now turning around and eating up MATTER.
- BEETHOVEN created his music, but MOZART's music is so pure that it seems to have been everpresent in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.
- The most BEAUTIFUL thing we can experience is the MYSTERIOUS. It is the source of all true art and science.
- "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. I is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true ART and true SCIENCE. Who ever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
- Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the ETERNAL, the UNFATHOMABLE: life and death flow into one, and there neither evolution nor destiny; only BEING."
- The DISCOVERY of NUCLEAR CHAIN REACTION need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of MATCHES.
- ... this WORLD is so enormously interesting if one looks at it OBJECTIVELY, and not as we believe it ought to be - and is not.
- PHYSICAL CONCEPTS are free CREATIONS of the human mind, and are not , however it may seem, uniquely determined by the eternal world. In our endeavour to understand reality, we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.
- A man (Max Planck) to whom it has been given to bless the world
with a GREAT CREATIVE IDEA has no need for the PRAISE of POSTERITY.
His very achievement has already conferred a higher boon upon him.
Yet it is good - indeed, it is indispensable - that representative of all who strive for TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE should be gathered today from the four corners of the globe. They are to bear witness that even in these times of ours when political passion and brute force hang like swords over the anguished and fearful heads of men, the standard of our IDEAL SEARCH for TRUTH is being held aloft undimmed, This ideal, a bond forever uniting scientists of all times and in all places, was embodied with rare completeness in MAX PLANCK.
- Yes, we now have to divide up our time like that, between POLITICS and EQUATIONS. But to us our equations are far more important, for POLITICS are only a matter of PRESENT CONCERN. A MATHEMATICAL EQUATION STANDS FOR EVER.
- A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe', a
part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts
and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of PRISON for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of COMPASSION to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
- A theory can be PROVED by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.
- REASON of course is weak, when measured against its never-ending task. Weak, indeed, compared with the follies and passions of mankind, which, we must admit, almost entirely control our human destinies, in great things and small. Yet the works of the UNDERSTANDING OUTLAST THE NOISY BUSTLING GENERATIONS and SPREAD LIGHT and WARMTH ACROSS THE CENTURIES. Consoled to this thought let us turn, in these unquiet days, to the memory of NEWTON, who three hundred years ago was given to mankind. To think of him is to think of his work. For such a man can be understood only by thinking of him as a scene on which the struggle for eternal TRUTH took place.
- . . . every REFERENCE BODY has its own particular time; unless we are told the reference body to which the statement refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event.
- All RELIGIONS, ARTS and SCIENCES are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ENNOBLING MAN' S LIFE, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual toward FREEDOM . . . . . the enoblement of the individual . . . to acknowledge the QUEST for OBJECTIVE TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE as man's highest and eternal aim. I am firmly convinced that the passionate will for JUSTICE and truth has done more to improve man's condition than calculating political shrewdness which in the long run only breeds general distrust. Who can doubt that Moses was a better leader of humanity than Machiavelli . . .to rejoice in humanity.
- Now, even though the realms of RELIGION and SCIENCE in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between them the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from SCIENCE, in the broadest sense what means will contribute to the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: SCIENCE without RELIGION is lame, RELIGION without SCIENCE is BLIND.
- The RELIGION of the future, a COSMIC RELIGION, should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology, covering both the natural and the spiritual. It should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual.
- One thing I have learnt in a long life is that all our SCIENCE measured against REALITY is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
- SCIENCE is not just a collection of LAWS, a catalogue of unrelated FACTS. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented IDEAS and CONCEPTS. PHYSICAL THEORIES try to form a PICTURE of REALITY and to establish its connection with the wide world of sense impressions. Thus the only justification for our mental structures is whether or in what way our theories form such a link.
- It stands to the everlasting credit of SCIENCE that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature. In creating elementary MATHEMATICS the Greeks fort the first time wrought a system of thought whose conclusions no one could escape. The scientists of the Renaissance then devised the combination of systematic experiment with mathematical method. This union made possible such precision in the formulation of natural laws
and such certainty in checking them by experience that as a result there was no longer room for basic differences of opinion in natural science. Since that time each generation has built up the heritage of knowledge and understanding, without the slightest danger of a crisis that might jeopardize the whole structure.
The general public may be able to follow the details of scientific research to only a modest degree; but it can register at least one great and important gain: confidence that human thought is dependable and NATURAL LAW universal.
- ... free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may plan his powers freely and gladly in the service of mankind . . .divinization of humanity . . . And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.
- Insofar as we may at all claim that SLAVERY has been abolished today, we owe its abolition to the practical consequences of SCIENCE." 54."Not only stimulating to the layman, but also will tend to counteract a too narrow SPECIALIZATION on the part of the PROFESSIONAL MATHEMATICIAN.
- TIME and SPACE are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.
- The knowledge of TRUTH as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration towards that very knowledge of TRUTH. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
- There are no great discoveries or great progress so long as there is an UNHAPPY CHILD on the earth.
- It is essential that the student acquires an UNDERSTANDING of and a FEELING for VALUES. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and morally good.. Otherwise he, with specialized knowledge, more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person.
- I am absolutely convinced that no WEALTH in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?
- One result can prove me WRONG.
- "the only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working . . . WORK. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE.
- Asked what he had to say about his favourite composer BACH, Albert Einstein replied: "Listen to his work, play it, honor it, . . . and otherwise shut up about it.
- My political ideal is DEMOCRACY. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive ADMIRATION and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault and no merit, of my own.
- the PIiILOSOPHERS (Plato and Kant) had a harmful effect upon the progress of SCIENTIFIC THINKING in removing certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism where they are under our control, to the intangible heights of the A PRIORI.
- The city [Shanghai) showed the difference in the social position of European and CHINESE which makes the later revolutionary events partially comprehensible. In Shanghai, the Europeans form a class of masters, while the Chinese are their servants ... the CHINESE are the poorest people of the earth, cruelly abused and treated worse than cattle . . . This is a working, groaning, yet stolid people.
- All knowledge of reality starts from EXPERIENCE and ends in it. Experience alone can decide on TRUTH.
- The belief in an EXTERNAL WORLD independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all NATURAL SCIENCE.
- Man can find MEANING in LIFE, short and perilous as it is, only through DEVOTING HIMSELF to SOCIETY.
- T he present difficulties of his science force the physicist to come to grips with PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS to a greater degree than was the case with earlier generations.
- It is not enough that you understand APPLIED SCIENCE as such. CONCERN for MAN HIMSELF must always constitute the chief objective of all TECHNOLOGICAL effort.
- whoever undertakes to set himself up to judge in the field of TRUTH and KNOWLEDGE is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
- One can give good reasons why reality cannot as earlier be represented by a CONTINUOUS field. From the quantum phenomena it appears to follow with certainty that a finite system of finite energy can be completely described by a finite set of numbers (quantum numbers). This does not seem to be in accordance with a continuum theory and must lead to an attempt to find a purely algebraic theory for the description if reality. But nobody knows how to obtain the basis of such a theory.
- Most of the fundamental ideas of SCIENCE are essentially SIMPLE and may, as a rule, be expressed in a LANGUAGE COMPREHENSIBLE to everyone.
- The man who regards his LIFE as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
- Perhaps I would never have stumbled into so complete a revelation save that the shell was Conus spurius, carrying the appellation given it by one who had misread, most painfully misread, a true message from the universe.. Each man deciphers from the ancient ALPHABETS of NATURE only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with MEANING. It had been so with DARWIN and THOREAU. The golden alphabet, in whatever shape it chooses to reveal itself, is never spurious. From its inscrutable lettering is created man and all the streaming cloudland of his dreams.
- . . . The MAN who learns how difficult it is to step outside the intellectual climate of his or any age has taken the first step on the road to EMANCIPATION, to world citizenship of a high order.
He has learned something of the forces which play upon the supposedly dispassionate mind of the scientist, he has learned how difficult it is to see differently from other men, even when that difference may be incalculably important. It is a study which should bring into the laboratory and the classroom not only greater tolerance for the ideas of others but a clearer realization that even the scientific atmosphere evolves and changes with the society of which it is a part. When the student has become consciously aware of this, he is in a better position to see farther and more dispassionately in the guidance of his own research. A not unimportant byproduct of such an awareness may be an extension of his own horizon as a human being.
- Great literary GENIUSES often possess an ear or a sensitivity for things in the process of becoming, for ideas which are just about to be born.
- Like a mutation, an IDEA may be recorded in the wrong time, to lie latent like a regressive gene and spring once more to life in an auspicious era.
- The layman's IDEA that we pursue a sustained, undeviating march toward some final TRUTH has slowly given way to the realization that, as in the case of all institutions, the history of science is beset by ambiguities, fears and trends which may play upon and influence severely disciplined minds. Ideas do not spring full-blown from a BRAIN, There has to be wandering along bypaths, midnight reading, and sustained effort. Even chance may play a role, as in the original discovery of X-rays.
- MAN has always had two ways of looking at nature, and these two divergent approaches to the world can be observed among modern primitive peoples, as well as being traceable far into the primitive past. Man has a belief in seen and unseen nature. He is both pragmatic and MYSTIC. He has been so from the beginning, and it may well be that the quality of his inquiring and perceptive intellect will cause him to remain so till the end.
Primitive man, grossly superstitious though he may be, is also SCIENTIST and TECHNOLOGIST. He makes tools based upon his empirical observation of the simple forces around him. Man would have vanished long ago if he had been content to exist in the wilderness of his own dreams. Instead he COMPROMISED. He accepted a world of reality, a natural, everyday, observable world in which he existed, and whose forces he utilized in order to survive. The other aspect of his mind, the MYSTICAL part seeking answers to final questions, clothed this visible world in a shimmering haze of MAGIC. Unseen spirits moved in the wood. Today in our sophistication we smile, but we are not satisfied with the appearances of the phenomenal world around us. We wish to pierce beneath to ask the question "WHY does the universe exist?" We have learned a great deal about secondary causes, about the how of things. The why, however, eludes us, and as long as this is the case, we will have a yearning for the marvellous, the explosive event in history. Indeed, so restless is Man's intellect that were he to penetrate to the SECRET of the UNIVERSE tomorrow, the Iikelihood is that he would grow bored on the day after.
- We live by MESSAGES - all true scientists, all lovers of the arts, indeed, all true men of any stamp. Some of the messages cannot be read, but man will always try. He hungers for messages, and when he ceases to seek and interpret them he will be no longer man.
- The evolution of the entire universe - stars, elements, life, man - is a process of drawing something our of nothing, out of the utter void of nonbeing. The creative element in the MIND of MAN - the latency which can conceive gods, carve statues, move the heart with the symbols of great poetry, or devise the formulas of modern physics - emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts. The reality we know in our limited lifetimes is dwarfed by the unseen potential of the abyss where science stops. In a similar way, the smaller universe of the individual human brain has its lonely commentary passages, or flares suddenly like a super nova, only to subside in death while the waves of energy it has released roll on through unnumbered generations. 9."MAN is at heart a ROMANTIC. He believes in thunder, the destruction of worlds, the voice out of the whirlwind. Perhaps the fact that he himself is now in possession of power wrenched from the atom's heart has enhanced the appeal of violence in natural events. The human generations are short-lived. We have difficulty in visualizing the age-long processes involved in the upheaval of mountain systems, the advance of continental glaciations or the creation of life. In fact, scarcely two hundred years have passed since a few wary pioneers began to suspect that the earth might be older than the 4004 years B.C. assigned by the theologians. At alI events, the sale of Velikovsky's WORLDS IN COLLISION a few years ago was a formidable indication that after the passage of two centuries of scientific endeavour, man in the mass was still enormously susceptible to the appeal of cataclysmic events, however badly sustained from the scientific point of view. It introduced to our modern generation, bored long since with the ENDLESS SMALL ACCRETIONS of SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS, the violence and catastrophism in world events which had so impressed our forefathers.
- Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite MUSIC? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your SOUL, the delicate fibres of LIFE where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present in one moment unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?
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'Tis God gives skill, But not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio STRADIVARI's violins Without Antonio.
- And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bold spot in the middle of my hair . . . Do I dare Disturb the UNIVERSE?
- No poet, no artist of an art has his complete MEANING alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead . . . when a new work of art is created . . . something . . . happens simultaneously to all the works of art which precede it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.
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MUSIC heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts . . . - The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. O perpetual revolution of configured stars, 0 PERPETUAL RECURRENCE of determined seasons, 0 World of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
- You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your SOUL was constituted.
- TIME present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
- The historical importance of a THEORY is not restricted to what
was originally in the mind of the author. It also consists of the
EXTENSIONS, ADJUNCTIONS, and DISTORTIONS to which it is submitted,
the reactions that result from the IMPACT of the theory and of its
distortions . . .
Had it remained restricted to its original field, Darwinism would never have attained the fame it did reach. . . .
- The IMPACT of any DOCTRINE consists also in its distortions and in the contradictions that arise against both the DOCTRINE and its distortions.
I don't believe in the generation gap. I believe in REGENERATION GAPS. Each day you regenerate or else you're not living.
- Every ARTIST writes his own AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
- A man must swallow more BELIEFS than he can DIGEST.
- The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago. . . had they happened to be within reach of PREDATORY HUMAN HANDS.
- Had there been a lunatic asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem JESUS CHRIST would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on a pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him and everything that happened after could but have confirmed the diagnosis.
- The greatest task before CIVILIZATION at present is to make MACHINES what they ought to be, SLAVES instead of the MASTERS of men.
- The MATHEMATICIAN has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
- In PHILOSOPHY, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.
- The omnipresent process of SEX as it is woven into the whole texture of our man' s or woman' s body is the pattern of all the process of our life.
- I believe that EINSTEIN's SERENITY and a seemingly acquired (rather than inherited) SPIRITUAL QUALITY, to which everyone who met him has attested, must have grown out of a CONVICTION drawn from his own early achievements that he was a 'MESSENGER of the GODS' in a manner of speaking. This produced a DEEP HUMILITY in him, which made him so much the hero of our century.
- Einstein was not particularly fond of teaching. Except for the earliest years of his scientific career, where on occasion it was necessary, he taught almost no classes. But in his younger years he was extremely active among his colleagues. During the first third of this century, the German language journals of physics were full of Einstein's contributions, often notes, comments, replies to other people's comments, and so on. It was only in the late 1920s that he began to fall more silent. I believe that this was mostly because he saw almost all physicists accept quantum mechanics, which he himself could not. He believed in full determinism, whereas it had become the accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics that strict determinism could be expected only of averages over classes, but that the: individual events are indeterminate. But Einstein never forgot that his view of determinism, or any such philosophical view, was a hypothesis; he never even intimated that one might conceive of it as self-evident Truth, as many other thinkers might have done. This, I feel, is one of the true signs of his greatness.
- For every minute you are ANGRY, you lose 60 seconds of HAPPINESS.
- The ARTIST has always the MASTERS in his eye.
- Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is BEAUTIFUL for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it every fair face, in every fair day, in every fair flower, and THAHK God for it as a cup of BLESSING.
- The laws of BEHAVIOUR yield to the energy of the individual:
- Every BOOK is written with a constant secret reference to INTELLIGENT persons whom the writer believes to exist in the million.
- CAUSE and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
- The true test of a CIVILIZATION is not the census, nor the of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
- When a man has got to a certain point in his career of truth he becomes conscious forevermore that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that what he can get out of his plot of ground by the sweat of his brow is his meat, and though the wide UNIVERSE is full of good, not a particle can he add himself but through his toil bestowed on this spot. It looks to him indeed a little spot, a poor barren possession, filled with thorns, and a lurking place for adders and apes and wolves. But CULTIVATION will work wonders. It will enlarge to his eye as it is explored. That little nook will swell to a world of light and power and love.
Daughter of TIME, the hypocritic DAYS, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands, To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my-morning wishes, hastily ' Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
- Don't tell me to get ready to die. I know not what shall be. The only preparation I can make is by fulfilling my PRESENT DUTIES. This is the EVERLASTING LIFE.
- The things taught in colleges and schools are not an EDUCATION, but the means of education.
- HAPPY is the house that shelters a FRIEND>
- A FRIEND may well be reckoned the masterpiece of NATURE.
- Every man passes his life in the search after FRIENDSHIP.
- UNIVERSITIES are of course hostile to GENIUSES.
- The flowering of civilization is the finished, am - the man of sense. of grace, of accomplishment, of social power - the GENTLEMAN.
- It is very hard to be simple enough to be GOOD.
- In analyzing HISTORY do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.
- The very design of IMAGINATION is to domesticate us in another, a celestial nature. ,
- Consider what you have in the smallest chosen LIBRARY. A company of the WISEST and WITTIEST men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years. They have set in best order the results of their LEARNING and WISDOM. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the THOUGHT which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.
- All REVOLUTIONARY social and political DOCTRINES were necessarily also mostly THEOLOGICAL heresies.
- But once we have become used to attributing to SquareRoot(-1) or and to the FOURTH DIMENSION some reality outside of our head, it is only a small step to accepting also the spirit world of the mediums.
- MAN is the sole animal capable of working his way out of the merely animal state - his normal state is one appropriate to his consciousness, one that has to be created by himself.
- MOTION is the mode of existence of MATTER ... There is no MATTER without motion, nor could there ever have been.
- MOTION as applied to matter is change in general.
- Let us not, however, flatter ourselves OVERMUCH an account of our human victories over NATURE. For each such victory NATURE takes its REVENGE on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings the results expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first.
- We, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to NATURE, and exist in the midst.
- Someone asked EUCLID: 'But what shall I get by learning these things?' EUCLID called his slave and said: "Give him three coins, for he must make gain out of what he learns.
- Euclid is the only man to whom there ever came, or can ever come again, the glory of having successfully incorporated in his own writings all the essential parts of the accumulated mathematical knowledge of his time.
HAPPY is he who has KNOWLEDGE from RESEARCH and does not turn to injury of his fellows or to unjust deeds, but looks upon the ageless order of eternal nature (to learn) in what way and where and how he came to be.