- The mere increase in the number of people on our planet, if they were evenly distributed over the land areas, would not in itself produce a powerful force for change. But when people are concentrated in a small space, the force for cultural, social, and technological change increases, in much the same way that, if gases are pumped into a container, the number of collisions between the atom and molecules in the gas will tend do rise.
Seen in this way, the CITY is an instrument for accelerating change. It creates an environment in which dense concentrations of people of varying background can come into contact every day. The product of these contacts is ACCELERATED cultural and social change.
- In INVENTION the creative process forms an original pattern; in discovery, the creative process reveals one. Discovery constantly adds to the number of things from which NEW patterns can be made; new patterns, particularly in technology, enable new discoveries to be made. The two - DISCOVERY and INVENTION - are phases in the creative process that are in resonance, each reinforcing the other.
Creativity is a state of mind, and it is most widely expressed by very young children, because their confrontation with their environment is constantly made up of original discoveries and inventions. In time, through social pressures to conform and the repetition of experience, most of them lose their sense of wonder and become less and less creative, trapped in a complete mold not of their own making.
- Out of the dreaming past, with its legends of steaming seas and gleaming glaciers, mountains that moved and suns that glared, emerges this creature, MAN - the latest phase in a continuing process that stretches back to the beginning of time. His is the heritage of all that has lived; he still carries the vestiges of snout and fangs and claws of species long since vanished; he is the ancestor of all that is yet to come. Do not regard him lightly - he is you.
- Here he comes stumbling down his ten thousand technological years - the fragmented MAN; a thing of bits and pieces cast upon the mudflats of the 20th Century by wayward tides and waves too high. This is a mosaic that walks, wearing all his yesterdays like tattoos. Little, or nothing, in all his ancient heritage fits him for this moment. There is always something coming ashore, and he is doing so now. He strides into the spectrum as once the lonely horseman rode into the sunset of another time and place. And no one knows what new adventures await him now.
- I have always endeavored to make EXPERIMENT the test and controller of theory and opinion . .
- Indeed, all I can say to you at the end of these lectures (for we must come to an end at one time or other) is to express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a CANDLE; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honorable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men.
- Here end my trials for the present. The results are negative. They do not shake my strong feeling of the existence of a relation between GRAVITY and ELECTRICITY, though they give no proof that such a relation exists.
- "Nothing is more difficult and requires more care than would PHILOSOPHICAL DEDUCTION, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixity of opinion. The man who is certain to be right is almost sure to be wrong, and he has the additional misfortune of inevitably remaining so. All our theories are fixed upon uncertain data, and all of them want alteration and support. Ever since the world WORLD began, opinion has changed with the progress of things; and it is something more than absurd to suppose that we have a sure claim to perfection, or that we are in possession of the highest stretch of intellect which has or can result from human thought. Why our successors should not displace us in our opinions, as well as in our persons, it is difficult to say; it ever has been so, and from analogy would be supposed to continue so; and yet, with all this practical evidence of the fallibility of our opinions, all, and none more than philosophers, are ready to assert the real TRUTH of their opinions.
- The SCIENTIST should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion, but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biased by appearances and by any forward hypothesis; be of no school; in doctrine have no master. He should not be a respector of persons but of things. TRUTH should be his primary object. If these qualities be added to industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of nature.
- Because humans regard themselves as the measure of all things, they assume that INSECTS possess the same senses that man does and use them in much the same way. Man takes it for granted, for example, that an insect carries its senses in its head. But the insect's head is so tiny that there is simply not room enough for all the mechanisms :hat provide the sort of information it needs about the outside world. As a result, various INSECTS have developed sensory apparatus that enables them to tell temperature with their feet, to hear with their legs, to detect the pressure of light on their backs and even to smell an object by stepping on it.
- Yet even such differences in perception do not explain the abilities of the solitary wasp. These must be sought in the complexities of the insect nervous system. Nor is insect intelligence superior to man'S. It is a different kind. Man depends to some extent on things he has learned to govern his behaviour, the insect almost never. It is bombarded by sensory impressions that serve to push buttons, stimulating automatic behaviour which, for want of a better name, is often called INSTINCT. The sequence of steps undertaken by the solitary wasp is largely the outcome of a complex interaction between stimuli and reflexes. The wasp is LOCKED into its behaviour pattern; it is completely unable to alter the order of its behavioural steps, to omit a step, or even to repeat a step. Should a human experimenter interfere, say by removing the victim from the nest, the wasp will nevertheless go on to the next step and seal up its egg in an empty larder. The wasp, like all but an exceptional few insect, is completely unable to exercise the kind of judgment man would use, and restock the nest.
- The INSECT which astounds us, which terrifies us with its extraordinary intelligence, surprises us the next moment with its stupidity when confronted with some simple fact that happens to lie outside its ordinary practice.
- INSTINCT is omniscient in the unchanging paths that have been laid down for it: away from these paths, it knows nothing. Sublime inspirations of science, astounding inconsequence of stupidity, are alike its portion; the animal will display the first when conditions are normal, and the second when they are governed by accident.
- If I had to choose between PAIN and nothing I would always choose pain.
- If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: the 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' is WORTH any number of old ladies.
- Nature has simplicity and therefore a great BEAUTY.
- I would like not to underestimate the value of the WORLD VIEW which is the RESULT of SCIENTIFIC EFFORT. We have been led to IMAGINE ALL SORTS of THINGS INFINITELY MORE MARVELLOUS than the IMAGININGS of POETS and DREAMERS of the PAST.
- From a long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten thousand years from now - there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as MAXWELL's discovery of the laws of ELECTRODYNAMICS. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.
- You can recognize TRUTH by its beauty and simplicity.
- . . . A man cannot live beyond the grave. Each generation that discovers something from its experience must pass that on, but it must pass that on with a delicate balance of respect and disrespect, so that the race does not inflict its errors too rigidly on its youth, but it does pass on the ACCUMULATED WISDOM, plus the wisdom that it may not be wisdom.
Poet, take up thy lyre; No more shall warlike fire Inflame the earth and sea; Cease from your martial strain, Sing songs of peace again, Sing of a WORLD set FREE. No more sing fear and hate While armies devastate; Nor boast of foes withstood; Let MERCY be your theme, Renew the old, fair DREAM Of HUMAN BROTHERHOOD. No more the trumpet blast Shall call to conflict fast, The fLame of war grows pale; Sing, Poet, God-inspired, Till all the world is fired With LOVE that shall not fail.
- You must take the bull by the tail and look the FACTS in the face.
- SEX isn't the best thing in the world, or the worst thing in the in the world - but there's nothing else quite like it.
- Every STRING which has one END also has another END.
- Every SYSTEM grows until it encroaches upon other SYSTEMS. Finagle's Law of Evolving Systems
- The tire is only FLAT on the bottom.
- The VARIABLES vary too much and the constants aren't as constant as they seem.
- There were two hypotheses as to the causes of electro-magnetic actions. One attributed electric attractions to a property of a thing called electricity to attract at a distance, the other attributed it to a pull exerted by means of the ETHER, somewhat in the way that air pushes balloons up. We do not know what the STRUCTURE of the ether is by means of which it can pull, but neither do we know what the structure of a piece of India-rubber is, by means of which it can pull; and we might as well ignore the India-rubber, though we know a lot about the laws of its action, because we do not know its structure, as to ignore the ether because we do not know its structure. Anyway, what was wanted was an experiment to decide between the hypothesis of direct action at a distance and of action by means of a medium.
- . . . Prof. Balfour Stewart . . . solar physics ... a fitting epitaph for this well-known great one of British Science. In this connection I am only expressing what we all feel when I say how well timed was the Royal Bounty recently extended to his widow. At the same time, the niggardly recognition of SCIENCE by the PUBLIC is a disgrace to the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. What Chancellor or General with his tens of thousands had done that for this country and mankind that FARADAY, DARWIN, and PASTEUR have done? The "public" now are but the children of those who murdered SOCRATES, tolerated the persecution of GALILEO, and deserted COLUMBUS.
- It is in the 30s we want FRIENDS. In the 40s we know they won't save us any more than LOVE did.
- The test for a first-rate INTELLIGENCE is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Only one thing matters, that wherever we go, and however we go, we hear the MUSIC of life.
- A work of morality, politics, criticism , . . will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.
- MATHEMATICS are like LOVERS . . . Grant a mathematician the least principle and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.
- MATHEMATICS and PHYSICS are sciences whose yoke scholars never cease to feel; ultimately it should be abandoned, but meanwhile methods keep multiplying; the same spirit of improvement which discloses new vantage points in these fields also improves, through abrigdment, our ways of learning about them, and provides new means mastering the new domains which it discloses in the sciences.
- Toute la PHILOSOPHIE n'est fondée que sur deux choses: sur ce q'on a 1'esprit curieux et les yeux mauvais.
- When the heavens were a little blue arch, stuck with stars, methought the UNIVERSE was too straight and close: I was almost stifled for want of air: but now it is enlarged in height and breadth, and a thousand vortices taken in. I begin to breathe with :more freedom, and I think the UNIVERSE to be incomparably more magnificent than it was before.
- Nothing is particularly hard if you DIVIDE it into small jobs.
- Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques,1ost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The PAST is like a huge library, mostly FICTION.
- DYNAMICS freed at last from the shackles of order and predictability.
- SYSTEMS liberated to randomly explore their every dynamical POSSIBILITY.
- Exciting VARIETY, richness of choice, a CORNUCOPIA of opportunity.
- EVOLUTION is CHAOS with FEEDBACK.
- GOD plays DICE with the UNIVERSE.
- Well, the play (Macbeth) has several aspects - it is educational, it teaches us something about legendary Scotland, something about Jacobean England and a good deal about human nature and its perils. We can study its origin, and study and enjoy its dramatic technique and the music of its diction. All that is true. But MACBETH is furthermore a world of its own, created by Shakespeare and existing in virtue of its own poetry. It is in this aspect Macbeth for Macbeth's sake, and this is what I intend by the phrase 'ART FOR ART'S SAKE'. A work of art - whatever else it may be - is a self-contained entity, with a life of its own imposed on it by its own creator. It has internal order. It may have external form. That is how we recognize it.
- The EMOTIONS may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
- I distrust GREAT MEN. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of BLOOD too,
- I have not written as much as I'd like to. I WRITE for two reasons: partly to make money and partly to win the RESPECT of people whom I RESPECT . . . I had better add that I am quite sure I am NOT a great NOVELIST.
- The steady discipline of intimate friendship with JESUS results in men becoming like him.
- HATING is like BURNING DOWN your own house to get rid of a rat.
As for civilization, from which we are at last about to escape, so far from being the social destiny of man, it is only a transient stage - a state of temporary evil with which globes are afflicted during the first ages of their careers; it is for the human race a disease of infancy, like teething; but it is a disease which has been prolonged in our globe at least twenty centuries beyond its natural term.
Cvilization has made the human heart the receptacle of all vice. What is needed to correct this is not a heap of volumes and precepts, but a mechanism conceived in opposition to this civilization which establishes man in a state of war with all his fellows and makes each family the secret enemy of every other family.
If the immensity of our desire is compared with the limited means that we have of satisfying them, it would seem that God behaved inconsiderately giving us passions so avid of pleasure, passions created to harass us by exciting a thousand longings of which only one one-tenth can be satisfied in the present social order.
Certain passions are called distributives and tend toward a social domestic arrangement to civilization, although known to primitive society. This is the secret of lost happiness that must be recovered.
The new social order would make up a huge 'orchestra' of the human passions, in several senses playing harmoniously and without constraint.
- I came to know GOD EXPERIMENTALLY.
- All must know first the voice crying in the wilderness of their HEARTS.
- My SKELETON so protected It can hardly be detected, But there is no slighted doubt Most creatures wear it inside out.
- From Icarus to present day Man has wanted WINGS; Yet the dragonfly can say "I've always had the things.
- Since WEALTH and CIVILIZATION breed as many causes of wars as poverty and barbarism, since the FOLLY and WICKEDNESS OF MAN ARE INCURABLE, there remains but one good action to be done. The sage will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its frequent fly through space an imperceptible relief will be given to the universal conscience which, by the way, does not exist.
- That which distinguishes man from animals is LYING and LITERATURE.
- It is better to UNDERSTAND a little than to misunderstand a lot.
- In every well-governed state WEALTH is a sacred thing; in DEMOCRACIES it is the only sacred thing.
- Be praised, my Lord, for our Sister BODILY DEATH, From whom none can escape that has drawn breath. 'Woe to those dying in mortal sin!' He saith. Blest those who find that in Thy body will The SECOND DEATH to them will bring no ill. Praise ye and bless my Lord, and do Him service due, With humblest thanks for all that He has done for you.
- Where there is HATRED, let me sow LOVE. Where there is INJURY, PARDON. Where there is DOUBT, FAITH. Where there is DESPAIR, HOPE. Where there is DARKNESS, LIGHT. Where there is SADNESS. JOY.
- Inspite of everything I still BELIEVE that people are really GOOD AT HEART.
- I know that there will always be COMFORT for every SORROW, whatever the circumstances may be.
- DRIVE thy BUSINESS, or it will DRIVE you.
- There never was yet a GREAT MAN that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
- Three may keep a SECRET, if two of them are dead.
- VIRTUE in our heads is worthless if there is VICE in our hearts.
- But while SCIENCE has this much in common with magic that both rest on a faith in order as the underlying principle of all things . . . the order presupposed by magic differs widely from that which forms the basis of science. The difference flows naturally from the different modes in which the two orders have been reached. For whereas the order on which magic reckons is merely an extension, by false analogy, of the order in which ideas present themselves to our minds, the order laid down by science is derived from patient and exact observation of the phenomena themselves. The abundance, the solidity, and the splendour of the results already achieved by science are well fitted to inspire us with a cheerful confidence in the soundness of its method.
- By RELIGION, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of Nature and of human life.
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An ARTIST is once more in rudiments an introvert, far removed from neurosis. He is oppressed by excessively powerful intellectual needs. He desires to win honour, power, wealth, fame and the love of women; but he lacks the means for achieving these satisfactions. Consequently, like any other unsatisfied man, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and his libido too, to the
wishful constructions of his life of phantasy, whence the path might lead to neurosis.
- CONSCIOUSNESS is an electrochemical function of the nervous system. Insert a new chemical into the brain and CONSCIOUSNESS changes radically.
- CONSCIOUSNESS is energy received and decoded by a STRUCTURE. In .. __ human beings, the receiving-decoding structures are neuro-chemical.
- But CREATIVE WRITERS are valuable allies and their evidence is to be praised highly, for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us dream. In their knowledge of the mind they are far in advance of us everyday people, for they draw upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science.
- The EGO, or territorial-status circuit of the primate brain is a social creation for which one person at a time gets the blame.
- The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious things in life. And yet, in making any general judgment of this kind, one is in danger of forgetting the manifold variety of humanity and its mental life. There are certain men from whom their contemporaries do not withhold veneration, although their GREATNESS rests on attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude. One might well be inclined to suppose that after all it is only a minority who appreciate these GREAT MEN, while the majority cares nothing for them. But the discrepancy between men's opinions and their behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-sided that things are probably not so simple.
- Being ENTIRELY HONEST with oneself is a good exercise.
- The voice of the INTELLECT is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.
- We have often heard the opinion advanced that SCIENCE should be built on clear and sharply defined IDEAS. In fact no science with such definitions. THINKING is an experiment dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in ACTION.
- The poets and philosophers before me discovered the UNCONSCIOUS; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.
- The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is 'what does a WOMAN want?
- I am not really a man of science, not an OBSERVER, not an EXPERIMENTER, and not a THINKER. I am by temperament nothing but a CONQUISTADOR . . . with the curiosity, the boldness, and the tenacity that belong to that type of person.
- The beauty of the night sky has been a source of FASCINATION and PLEASURE for all mankind. Since time immemorial, men and women have watched and WONDERED at the procession of stars across the heavens and rhythmic wanderings of the planets among the constellations. ASTRONOMY was the first science of ancient civilization, the avocation of Egyptian priests and Greek philosophers, medieval monks and Renaissance princes.
- To the ASTRONOMER of today, probing ever deeper with MIND and telescope, the UNIVERSE is more than beautiful: It is AMAZING, VIOLENT, and ENDLESSLY MYSTERIOUS. The revelations of recent research have been so dramatic and so extreme as to leave both SCIENTISTS and laymen bewildered. Modern ASTRONOMY deals with the birth and death of stars; with exotic matter and fantastic energies; with near-infinities of space and time; with creation, evolution, and the ultimate destiny of the universe. As the sum of knowledge grows, the astronomer continues to seek answers to man's most profound questions: What is grand design of the universe? How was it created? How did we get here? What are we? Are we alone?
- It is impossible for any sensitive person to look at a star-filled sky without being stirred by thoughts of CREATION and ETERNITY. The MYSTERY of the origin and destiny of the UNIVERSE haunts us throughout our lives.
- A society that puts EQUALITY - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom,
and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Though a by-product of freedom, greater equality is not an accident. A FREE SOCIETY RELEASES the ENERGIES and ABILITIES of PEOPLE to PURSUE their own OBJECTIVES. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as FREEDOM is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people. FREEDOM MEANS DIVERSITY but also MOBILITY. It preserves the opportunity for today's disadvantaged to become tomorrow's privileged and, in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.
- Our SOCIETY is what we make it. We can shape our institutions. Physical and human characteristics limit the alternatives available to us. But NONE prevents us, IF WE WILL, from building a society that relies primarily on VOLUNTARY COOPERATION to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master.
- Now the bee's dances have once again led us back to the startinq point of these discusssions, to the bee's eye and what it does. The bees were the first to reveal to us that the POLARIZED LIGHT of the sky can be perceived and used for orientation. Today we know that most arthropods and many molluscs possess the same ability. But only the bees have succeeded in putting the POLARIZED LIGHT to work in their system of COMMUNICATION. With its help they enable their comrades to find a distant goal all by themselves.
- Through such experiments and yet others we are certain that bees are able to orient by means of reference to the POLARIZATION PATTERN of the BLUE SKY. In this connection we thought at first of a special capacity of the bees. We were accustomed to exceptional accomplishments from them. But it soon became evident that other insects too could perceive the polarized light of the sky and could orient accordingly. Ants make use of the sun and of polarized light in order to maintain a constant compass direction in their journey away from the nest and in order to find their way home again by the same route. Crustaceans and spiders that live on the seashore or on the margins of lakes and rivers orient in the same way. If a storm carries them up into dry terrain, they will set out toward shore at any hour of the day. For, like the bees, they too are familiar with the course of the sun and they possess an 'INTERNAL CLOCK', without which they would be unable to use the sun and sky as a compass. From one year to another the discoveries piled up. Today it may be stated that the perception of polarized light is a capability distributed generally among insects and crustaceans, that it also occurs among spiders and even among octopuses and squids with their altogether differently constructed eyes, and that it is an important means of orientation. But among human beings, and among all vertrebates, one looks for it in vain. The POLARIZATION PATTERNS in the SKY remain a closed world to these creatures. Their eyes lack an analyzer for polarized light.
- Man is the only animal that can be BORED.
- Man has achieved FREEDOM from - without yet having freedom to - to be himself, to be PRODUCTIVE, to be fully awake.
- Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he WANTS, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
- Two ROADS diverged in a yellow wood, And both that morning equally lay And sorry I could not travel both In leaves no step had trodden black And be one traveller, long I stood Oh, I kept the first for another day. And looked down one as far as I could Yet knowing how way leads on to way, To where it bent in the undergrowth; I doubted if I should ever come back. Then took the other, as just as fair, I shall be telling this with a sigh And having perhaps the better claim, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Because it was grassy and wanted wear; TWO ROADS DIVERGED in a wood, and I- Though as for that the passing there I took the one less traveled by, Had worn them really about the same, And that has made all the difference.
- We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the SECRET sits in the middle and knows.
- The UNIVERSE is but the thing of things The things but balls all going round in rings Some of them mighty huge, some mighty tiny All of them radiant and mighty shiny.
- The WOODS are lovely, dark and deep. But I have PROMISES to keep, And miles to go before I SLEEP, And miles to go before I seep.
- LOVE is an irresistibly DESIRE to be irresistibly DESIRED.
- It is a silly game where nobody WINS.
- A PROVERB is much matter decocted into few words.
- LEARNING makes a man fit company for himself.
- Nature teaches us to love our friends, but RELIGION our ENEMIES.
- RELIGION is the best armour in the world, but the worst cloak.
- We are all ADAM'S CHILDREN but SILK makes the difference.