- Haber, Wolfgang
SCIENTIFIC ECOLOGY works along a very great number of different lines - perhaps a typical feature of this discipline. In ecological research each element of these different approaches to work and the
of the varied opinions formed about them plays its part.
All ENVIRONMENTAL areas, from the primeval forest to the large city, can be regarded as ECOSYSTEMS and investigated accordingly, most of the attention being given to the lasting existence and functioning or 'equilibrium' of these systems.
Ecosystems are thus phenotypic and functional images of our environment and are divided up and delimited in different ways. New concepts such as agricultural ecosystems, urban ecosystems, etc. are now coming to be accepted. Together with natural, nearly natural and semi-natural ecosystems they provide the pattern which makes up a landscape.
It is not enough to transfer the concept of the agricultural ecosystem to agricultural science and then to believe that justice has been done to ecological interests. We must at the same time go a step
further and examine the role of the agricultural ecosystem in the cultivated landscape.
- Hackett, Sir John
Circumstances don't make men. It is how men REACT to circumstances that reveals their character.
- Hadamard, Jacques
- It is important for him who wants to DISCOVER not to confine himself to one chapter of science, but to keep in touch with various others.
- LOGIC MERELY SANCTIONS the conquests of the intuition.
- Hahn, Hans
Ein allwissendes Wesen braucht keine LOGIK und keine MATHEMATIK.
- Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson
- Our only hope of understanding the UNIVERSE is to look at it from as many points of view as possible. This is one of the reasons why the data of the MYSTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS can usefully supplement those of the mind in its normal state. Now, my own suspicion is that the
universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in any PHILOSOPHY. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for DREAMING.
- The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the UNIVERSE as it is assumed to be in physical science is a spiritual universe in which spiritual values
count for EVERYTHING.
- Hale, Nathan
I only regret that I have but one LIFE to give for my country.
- Halevy, Elie
The SOCIALISTS believe in two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: Freedom and ORGANIZATION.
- Halley, Edmund
Nearer (than Newton) to the GODS no MORTAL may approach.
- Halmos, Paul R.
- It is too easy to be too busy to pay attention to what anyone else is doing, but no good. All of us should know, and want to know, what has been discovered since our formal education ended, but new works and relations between them, are growing too fast to keep up. It is possible for a person to learn of the title of a recent work and of the KEY WORDS used in it and still not have the faintest idea of what the subject is.
"Progress Reports" is to be an almost periodic column intended to increase everyone's mathematical information about what others have been up to. Each column will report one step forward in the
mathematics of our time. The purpose is to inform, more than to instruct: What is the name of the subject, what are some of the words it uses, what is a typical question, what is the answer, who found it.
- It saddens me that educated people don't even know that my SUBJECT EXISTS.
- Hamelin, Octave
KNOWLEDGE will no longer be seen as the invasion of the subject by alien elements, but as a putting into action by the subject of its POTENTIALITIES.
- Hamilton, Arthur
No RAINBOW is gray in the middle - only men's illusions are.
- Hamilton, Sir William
On earth there is nothing great but MAN; in man there is nothing great but MIND.
- Hamilton, Sir William Rowan
-
And through the maze of satellites involved,
And to the farthest planet, and beyond;
Till on the verge of the bottomless abyss
He stood awhile in horror. Radiant sweat
Bursts from his limbs angelic: nathless soon
He entered that dark region. The array
0f fallen Powers around their gloomy King,
Innumerable, stretching far and wide,
Throne above Throne, an ordered multitude,
Seemed to expect defiance against heaven,
And words of rage and pride; when suddenly
They saw the flashing of the sword once given
To Michael from the armoury of God
Wave in the Seraph's hand: awe from above
Quell'd every empty gesture of revenge,
And threatening impotent, and show of war.
Their King himself in chains, and all the rest
Through the wide upper tract trail'd after him
The Angel now returned; and with the hail
"Well done, thou faithful servant!" took his post
Upon the north side of the Hill of God.
- Who says that SHAKESPEARE did not know his lot,
But deem'd that in time's manifold decay
His memory should die or pass away,
And that within the shrine of human thought
To him no altar should be reared? 0 hush!
O veil thyself awhile in solemn awe!
Nor dream that all man's mighty spirit-law
Thou know'st; how all the hidden fountains gush
Of the soul's silent prophesying power,
For as deep LOVE, mid all its wayward pain,
Cannot believe but it is loved again
Even so, strong GENIUS, with its ample dower
Of a world-grasping love, from that deep feeling
Wins of its own wide sway the clear revealing.
- 0 brooding spirit of WISDOM and of LOVE,
Whose mighty wings even now overshadow me,
Absorb me in thine own immensity,
And raise me far my finite self above.
Purge vanity away, and the weak care
That name or fame of me may widely spread.
And the deep wick keep burning in their stead,
Thy blissful influence afar to bear -
Or see it borne. Let no desire of ease
No lack of courage, faith, or love, delay
Mine own steps, or that high thought - paven way
In which my soul her dear COMMISSION sees.
Yet with an equal joy let me behold
Thy chariot o'er that way by others rolled.
- Hammer, B.R.
Those who find HAPPINESS live not in years that are numbered but in the memories of those who remember them.
- Hammerton, J.A.
No branch of medical knowledge has been ignored in the scheme of our Encyclopedia, although it is written essentially for the "general reader". Some acquaintance with the principles of anatomy of the human body is necessary to a proper understanding of its functions, and this is provided adequately both in letterpress and illustration. Ample information for the recognition and preliminary treatment of the many diseases that assail humanity is set forth in the frankest and most easily comprehensible manner. For although it may be true that a man cannot be his own DOCTOR, any more than he can be his own lawyer, there is much that a patient can do to further the efforts of his physician if he has intelligent ideas concerning the nature and treatment of his complaint.
- Handel, Georg Friedrich
Handel's gone, the soul of harmony is fled!
And warbling Angels hover round him dead.
Never, no, never since the Tide of Time,
Did music know a genius so sublime!
Each mighty harmonist that's gone before,
Lessen' d to Mites when we his Works explore.
- Handke, Peter
No sooner have I begun to speak - than I assume a camouflage and differ no longer from my surroundings.
No sooner have I begun to differ - than my differing makes me one with my surroundings.
No sooner have I become one with my surroundings - than I begin once more to speak and I differ.
No sooner have I heard that no one is speaking - Than I secretly translate for myself the objects I perceive into language, and no sooner have I translated the objects - than they become a CONCEPT
to me.
- Hanslick, Eduard
MUSIC is sounding form in motion.
- Hardy, Godfrey Harold
- A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of PATTERNS. . . . The mathematician's patterns, like the painter s or the poet's, must be BEAUTIFUL; the ideas, like the colours or the
words must fit together in a HARMONIOUS way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
- The Greeks .. as Littlewood said to me once, are not clever schoolboys or 'scholarship candidates', but 'Fellows of another college'. So GREEK MATHEMATICS is "permanent", more permanent even than Greek LITERATURE. Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylos
is forgotten, because LANGUAGES die and MATHEMATICAL IDEAS do not!
- The best MATHEMATICS is serious as well as beautiful. . . . The beauty of a mathematical theorem depends a great deal on its seriousness ... A "serious theorem is a theorem that contains
"SIGNIFICANT" ideas . . . . There are two things at any rate that seem essential, a certain generality and a certain depth.
- I had better say at once that by 'MATHEMATICS I mean real mathematics, the mathematics of FER3MAT and EULER and GAUSS and ABEL; and not the stuff that passes for mathematics in an engineering laboratory. I am not thinking of '"PURE MATHEMATICS" (though naturally that is my first concern), I count MAXWELL and EINSTEIN and EDDINGTON and DIRAC among REAL MATHEMATICIANS.
- I will state my own position dogmatically in order to avoid minor misapprehensions. I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or OBSERVE it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations", are simply our notes of our observations.
- It seems to me that no philosophy can possibly be sympathetic to a mathematician which does not admit, in one manner of other, the immutability and unconditional validity of MATHEMATICAL TRUTH. Mathematical theorems are true or false; their truth or falsity is absolutely independent of our knowledge of them. in some sense, mathematical truth is part of objective reality.
- Hardy, Timothy
The only antidote to the BOREDOM of others is the SURPRISE within yourself.
- Harris, S,J,
The real danger is not that COMPUTERS will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to THINK like computers.
- Harrison, R.
The specific purpose of MENSTRUATION is obscure. Not least of its imponderables is why it should occur only in certain primates. It would seem to be a waste of tissue and essential substances such as iron. Several hundred millilitres of blood are lost each month and this is obviously a drain on a woman's reserves and a constant call on her blood-forming bone marrow. Apart from its social disadvantages and discomfort, it often leads to tiredness, bad temper and anemia. From a biological point of view, menstruation should not occur at all!
- Hart-Smith, W.
This is an approximate idea only. Our maps always maintain an element of MYSTERY . . .
- Hassan, I-Sabbah X
AMERICA is a white man's HEAVEN and a black man's HELL.
- Haweis, Hugh R.
- MUSIC reveals us to ourselves, it represents those modulations and temperamental changes which escape all verbal analysis, it utters what must else remain forever unuttered and unutterable; it feeds that deep, ineradicable instinct within us of which all art is only the reverberated echo, that craving to express, through the medium of the senses, the SPIRITUAL and ETERNAL REALITIES which underlie them.
- The cause of freedom, in MUSIC as elsewhere, is now very nearly triumphant; but at a time when its adversaries were many and powerful, we can hardly imagine the sacred bridge of liberty kept by a more stalwart trio than SCHUBERT: the Armorer, CHOPIN: the Refiner, and LISZT: the Thunderer.
- Hawking, Stephen William
- The universe of EASTERN MYSTICISM is an illusion, A physicist who attempts to link it with his own work has ABANDONED PHYSICS.
- . . . SINGULARITIES are places where the curvature of spacetime is infinite, and the concepts of SPACE and TIME cease to have any meaning. Scientific theories are formulated on a spacetime background, and consequently they will break down at a singularity. If there were events before the BIG BANG, they would not enable us to predict the present state of the universe, because predictability would break down at the BIG BANG. Similarly, there is no way that we can determine
what happened before the big bang from a knowledge of events after the big bang. This means that the existence or non-existence of events before the BIG BANG is purely metaphysical; they have no consequences for the present state of the universe. We might as well apply the principle of economy, known as Occam's razor, to cut them out of the theory and say that time began at the big bang. Similarly, there is no way that we can predict or influence any events after the BIGCRUNCH, so we might as well regard it as the END of TIME.
- A good physical THEORY should not only correctly describe the current experimental knowledge, but should also predict new results which can be tested by experiment, the further the predictions from the original experiments, the greater the credit to the theory, if they are found to be correct. Thus OBSERVATIONS of whether or not SINGULARITIES actually occurred, would provide a powerful test of the GENERAL THEORY of RELATIVITY in strong fields.
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel
- No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to HIMSELF, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
- .A bodily DISEASE, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
- Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, INDIVIDUALS are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful RISK of losing his place forever.
- Nobody, I think, ought to read POETRY, or look at PICTURES or STATUES, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.
- No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a ROMANCE about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything
but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. ... ROMANCE and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin? ,to make them grow.
- What other dungeon is so dark as one's own HEART! What jailer so inexorable as one's SELF!
- It is because the SPIRIT is inestimable that the lifeless body is so little valued.
- In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really KNOW or FEEL; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in REALIZING and convincing themselves of the WISDOM they uttered long ago.
- I do not want to be a DOCTOR and live by MEN's diseases, nor a
MINISTER to live by their SINS, nor a LAWYER and live by their
QUARRELS.
- Hayakawa, Samuel Ichyé
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your CULTURE that you are a victim of it.
- Haydn, Franz Joseph
It is the MELODY which is the charm of music, and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is a work of GENIUS.
- Haydon, A.E.
The heart of RELIGION, the quest of the ages, is the outreach of man, the social animal, for the values of the satisfying life.
- Hayek, von Friedrich August
- COMPETITION means decentralized planning by many separate persons.
- INFLATION ... sooner or later makes a more extensive unemployment inevitable than that which that POLICY was intended to prevent, It does so by drawing more and more workers into kinds of
jobs which depend on continuing or even accelerating inflation.
- Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated EFFORT of many INDIVIDUALS, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.
- The POWER which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest FUNCTIONAIRE possess who wield the COERCIVE POWER of the STATE, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.
- We must look at the PRICE SYSTEM as ... a mechanism for communicating INFORMATION if we want to understand its real function.
The system of PRIVATE PROPERTY is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own PROPERTY, but scarcely less for those who do not.
- The RATIONALIST whose REASON is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious REASON, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the DESTROYER of the CIVILIZATION Built upon them.
- I am certain that nothing has done so much to DESTROY the juridicial safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after the mirage of SOCIAL JUSTICE.
- Hazlitt, William
- Though FAMILIARITY may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off ADMIRATION.
- There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiless; selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the PUBLIC.
- If MANKIND had wished for what is RIGHT, they might have had it long ago.
- WIT is the salt of conversation, not the food.
- Healy, Denis
With great respect to President REAGAN, the Governor-General of
Grenada, Sir Paul Scoon, is RESPONSIBLE to the QUEEN of ENGLAND and
not to the President of the United States and so far, MRS. REAGAN is
not the Queen of England. '
- Heath, Edward
It is the unpleasant and unacceptable face of CAPITALISM, but one should not suggest that the WHOLE of BRITISH INDUSTRY consists of practices of this kind.
- Heaviside, Oliver
MATHEMATICS is an experimental science, and DEFINITIONS do not come first but later on.
- Heine, Heinrich
- Every AGE thinks its battle the most IMPORTANT of all.
- COMMUNISM possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are hunger, envy, and death.
- Freedom and EQUALITY! They are not to be found on earth below or HEAVEN above. The STARS on high are not alike. . . . all obey an iron LAW.
- Where words leave off MUSIC begins.
- What is MUSIC? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between THOUGHT and PHENOMENA. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between SPIRIT and MATTER, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but it is spirit subject to the measurement of time. It is matter, but it
is matter that can dispense with space.
- Heinlein, Robert A.
Anyone who cannot cope with MATHEMATICS is not fully human.
- Heisenberg, Werner
- BEAUTY in EXACT SCIENCE, no less than in the ARTS . . . . is the most important source of illumination and clarity.
- Every WORD or CONCEPT, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.
- Even for the physicist the DESCRIPTION in plain language will be a criterion of the DEGREE of understanding that has been reached.
- GIBBS was the first to introduce a PHYSICAL CONCEPT which can only be applied to an object when our knowledge of the object is incomplete. If for instance the motion and position of a molecule
in a gas were known, then it would be pointless to continue speaking of the temperature of the gas. The concept of temperature can only be used meaningfully when the system is not fully known and we wish to derive statistical conclusions from our incomplete knowledge.
- Modern theory did not arise from revolutionary IDEAS which have been, so to speak, introduced into the exact sciences from without. On the contrary, they have forced their way into research which was attempting consistently to carry out the program of classical physics - they arise out of its very nature.
- It is as true of NATURAL SCIENCE as it is of any other discipline that the object of research is no longer NATURE itself, but rather NATURE which has been exposed to the questioning mind of man. and in this respect Man comes face to face with HIMSELF yet again when examining NATURE. Our time evidently has to face the task of coming to terms with this new situation in every sphere of life, and only when that has happened will it be possible for man to attain once more the 'confidence in the impulses of the mind' of which the Chines sage speaks. The path leading to this goal will be long and arduous.
- QUANTUM THEORY reminds us of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life we must forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both PLAYERS and SPECTATORS.
9."The conception of objective REALITY . . . evaporated into the . . . Mathematics that represents no longer the behaviour of elementary particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
- SCIENCE clears the field on which TECHNOLOGY can build.
- SCIENCE no longer confronts NATURE as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in the interplay between man and nature. The SCIENTIFIC METHOD of analysing, explaining, and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its
intervention science alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method and object can no longer be separated. The SCIENTIFIC WORLD-VIEW has CEASED to be a SCIENTIFIC
VIEW in the TRUE SENSE of the word.
- I believe, just like you (Einstein), that the SIMPLICITY of NATURAL LAWS has an OBJECTIVE CHARACTER, that it is not just the result of thought economy. If nature leads us to MATHEMATICAL FORMS of GREAT SIMPLICITY and BEAUTY. . . we cannot help thinking they are true, that they reveal a GENUINE feature of nature.
- . . . when new groups of phenomena compel changes in the PATTERN of THOUGHT . . . even the most eminent of physicists find immense difficulties. For the demand for change in the THOUGHT PATTERN may engender the feeling that the ground is to be pulled from under one's feet. . . . I believe that the difficulties at this point can hardly be overestimated. Once one has experienced the desperation with which clever and conciliatory men of science react to the demand for a change in
the THOUGHT PATTERN, one can only be amazed that such revolutions in SCIENCE have actually been possible at all.
- NATURAL SCIENCE no longer deals with the world which presents itself directly to us, but with a dark background of this world which we bring to light through our experiments.
- The exact sciences also start from the ASSUMPTION that in the end it will always be possible to UNDERSTAND nature, even in every new field of experience, but that we may make no a priori ASSUMPTIONS about the meaning of the word UNDERSTAND.
- Helmholtz, von Hermann
- Happy IDEAS come unexpectedly without effort like an INSPIRATION, as far as I am concerned. They have never come to me when my mind was fatigued or when I was at my working table.
- MATHEMATICS and MUSIC! The most glaring possible opposites of human thought! Yet connected, mutually sustained!
- Hemmingway, Ernest
- All good BOOKS are alike in that they are TRUER than if they had really happened.
- I know only that what is MORAL is what you feel good AFTER and
what is IMMORAL is what you feel bad after.
-
Science owes more to the STEAM ENGINE than the steam engine owes to science.
- Hendrix, John
MANIC DEPRESSION is a frustrating mess.
- Henry, Patrick
I know not what course others take but as for me . . . give me LIBERTY or give me death.
- Heraclitus of Ephesus
- For those who are awake the COSMOS is one.
- The turnings of FIRE are: first sea, of sea half earth and half
'prester'.
Earth is fused as sea and is measured in the same proportion as
before.
All things are an equal exchange for fire, and fire for all
things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.
No GOD or MAN CREATED This WORLD ORDER, but it always was and is
and will be: an ever-living fire, being kindled in measures and extinguished in measures.
- Good and ill are one.
To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.
- NATURE loves to hide.
- TIME is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's.
- I.f you do not expect it, you will not find the UNEXPECTED, for
it is hard to find and difficult.
- Herbert, George
LIVING well is the best revenge.
- Herold, Don
MORALIZING and MORALS are two entirely different DIFFERENT things and are
always found in entirely different people.
- Herrick, Robert
Gather . . . while ye may, Old TIME is still a-flying.
- Herschel, Sir John (Fredrick William)
SCIENCE is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become ATTAINABLE by one. The knowledge of reasons and their conclusions constitutes abstract, that of causes and effects, and of the LAWS of NATURE, NATURAL SCIENCE.
- Herschel, Sir William (Frederick William)
The HEAVENS . . . . are now seen to resemble a luxuriant GARDEN which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds; and one advantage we may at least reap from it is
that we can, as it were, extend the range of our experience to an immense duration. For, to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, is it not almost the same thing, whether we
live successively to witness the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering, and conception of a plan, or whether a vast number of specimens, selected from every change through which the plant passes in the course of its existence be brought at once to our view.
- Hershey, Lewis
The really GREAT man is endowed with a higher degree of sensitiveness, so that seeing a little sooner and farther than his fellows the coming situations, he can size them up in advance.
- Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf
- The most important problem which our conscious KNOWLEDGE of nature should enable us to solve is the ANTICIPATION of future events, so that we may arrange our present affairs in accordance with such anticipation.
- One cannot help feeling that MATHEMATICAL FORMULAS exist independently of us and live their own intelligent life, that they are more clever than their producers, because we derive from these
formulas even more than was embedded in them from the very beginning.
- Heschel, Abraham J.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH is an entry into the endless, not a blind alley; Solving one problem, a greater one enters our sight. One answer breeds a multitude of new questions; explanations are merely
indications of greater puzzles. Everything hints at something that transcends it; the detail indicates the whole, the whole, its idea, the idea, its mysterious root. What appears to be a center is but a
point on the periphery of another center. The totality of a thing is actual INFINITY.
- Hess, Harry Hammond
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES and IDEAS are produced by the intuition, creativeness and genius of a man. DOLLARS of themselves don't produce this any more than they could be expected to produce another Mona Lisa. This is something which I believe you can readily understand.
- Hesse, Hermann
- The call of DEATH is a call of LOVE. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmation, if we accept it as ONE of the GREAT ETERNAL FORMS of LIFE and TRANSFORMATION.
- If you HATE a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
- Every MAN is MORE THAN JUST HIMSELF; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every MAN, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous and worthy of every consideration.
- . . . . one could never make out what precisely was there, but there were always enchantingly beautiful, enticing brief glints of drowned golden treasures in the wet black ground: all true MYSTERIES . . . were just like this mysterious water . . . they had no precise contour or shape: they could only be guessed at, a beautiful distant possibility.
- Love this RIVER, stay by it, learn from it.
- They all become part of the RIVER. It was the goal of all of them, yearning, desiring, suffering, and the RIVER's voice was full of longing, full of smarting woe, full of insatiable desire. The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddharta saw the river hasten, made up of himself and his relatives and all the people he had ever seen. All the waves and the water hastened, suffering towards the goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another.
- Heyting, Arend
If really the FORMALIZATION of LANGUAGE is the trend of SCIENCE, then INTUITIONISTIC MATHEMATICS does not belong to science in this sense of the word. It is rather a phenomenon of LIFE, a natural activity of man.
- Hilbert, David
- As long as a branch of science offers an ABUNDANCE of PROBLEMS so long is it alive; a lack of problems forshadows extinction or the cessation of independent development.
- From time immemorial the INFINITE has stirred men's emotions more than any other question. Hardly any other idea stimulated the mind so fruitfully. Yet no other concept needs clarification more that it does.
- Hill, Thomas
The discoveries of NEWTON have done more for England and for the race, than has been done by whole dynasties of British monarchs; and we doubt not that in the great mathematical birth of 1843, the QJATERNIONS of HAMILTON, there is as much real promise of benefit to mankind as in any event of Victoria' s reign.
- Hillary, Sir Edmund
There is precious little in CIVILIZATION to appeal to a YETI.
- Hinshelwood, Sir Cyril Norman
At no stage is there any strict meaning in saying that artists paint what they see. That is why the contemplation of the greatest works of ART can be tinged with sadness and a subtle feeling of frustration.
When those whose minds are not attuned to MATHEMATICS and the translation of its symbols into METAPHOR (and this is now very common in physics), they are coming close to POETRY.
People are led both by intellectual and by emotional paths to the CONTEMPLATION of RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS. In so far as men seek to-fuse their own personal works with the impersonal element in the external world, they are pursuing the vision of NATURE; in their DESIRE for COMMUNICATION with the UNIVERSAL and PERSONAL they pursue what, I suppose through the ages, they have meant by the VISION of GOD.
- Hippocrates
- Some people say that the heart is the organ with which we think and that it feels pain and anxiety. But it is not so. Men ought to know that from the BRAIN and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and tears.
- LIFE is short, and ART long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient,
the attendants, and externals cooperate.
- Hirsch, Morris W.
It is the nature of MINDS to organize experience. Human minds can recognize individual objects and perceive relations between them which in turn become objects; lump similar objects together into more abstract CONCEPTS; and analyze complex objects in terms of simpler ones. Human minds may do other things; other minds may do these things.
- Hitler, Adolf
The art of LEADERSHIP . . . . consists in consolidating the ATTENTION of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that ATTENTION.
- Hobbes, Thomas
- The reputation of power is POWER.
2.I am about to take my LAST VOYAGE, a GREAT LEAP in the dark.
3."No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent DEATH; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
- Høffding, Harald
The essence of RELIGION is a belief in the persistency of value in the world.
- Hoffer, Eric
- HUMILITY is not RENUNCIATION of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.
- Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective LEADERSHIP.
- POWER corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
- Hoffman, David
The images produced along the way were the objects that we used to make DISCOVERIES. They are an integral part of the process of doing MATHEMATICS, not just a way to convey a discovery made without their use. This has a very unusual consequence. When a mathematician understands or discovers something new, the way in which he or she understood things before is rapidly obliterated. Mathematics devours its own history in the process of creating itself. Because of this, historical accounts of mathematics are often anachronistic; for example, a paper of Euler is described in terms of the modern theory of partial differential equations. This may account in part for the depressing fact that new results may rapidly seem trivial and obvious to their DISCOVERERS; what it was like not to know these things is lost in the process of finding them out. Notes or old papers usually do not succeed in recreating the previous state of understanding.
- Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm (Amadeus)
MUSIC is the most ROMANTIC of all the ARTS - one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one - for its sole subject is the INFINITE. Music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world in which
he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself to an inexpressible longing.
- Hofstadter, Douglas R.
Perhaps one way to think of the universal WAVE FUNCTION is as the mind - or brain, if you prefer - of the great novelist in the sky, GOD, in which all possible branches are being simultaneously entertained. We would be mere subsystems of GOD'S BRAIN, and these versions of us are no more privileged or authentic than our galaxy is the only genuine galaxy. God's brain, conceived in this way, evolves smoothly and deterministically, as EINSTEIN always maintained. The physicist PAUL DAVIS, writing on just this topic in his recent book "Other Worlds" says: ' Our consciousness weaves a route at random along the ever-bending evolutionary pathway of the cosmos, so it is we,
rather than God, who are playing dice.
- Hogarth, William
This love of PURSUIT, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our nature, and design'd, no doubt, for necessary and useful purposes.
- Hogben, Lancelot Thomas
- I'm an ATHEIST, thank God.
2."The METHOD of SCIENCE requires a mind fixed intently on the outer side of things. It is not concerned with values: values are of the soul and are manufactured neither by experiment nor logic. . . . In being a scientist it is necessary to cease for the moment to be human.
- The SCIENTISTS whose discoveries were revolutionizing industry and social structure alike pursued their investigations with a relentless tenacity, regardless of whither the application of their research was boding mankind, or content to leave future generations to solve the perplexities which presented themselves.
- European and American society is permeated with the view of INTELLECTUAL AIMLESSNESS . . . Science has brought forth chaos, because the thought which created it had no conscious direction or moral.
- Accepting the most conservative allowance, it may be stated with some confidence that the contribution of environment to the INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT is at least as large as the recorded differences between racial and occupational groups subject to different environmental influence.
6.The biologist should be "primarily concerned with sterilizing the instrument of research before undertaking surgical operations upon the body politic.
- Without a knowledge of MATHEMATICS, the GRAMMAR of SCIENCE and ORDER, we cannot plan the rational society in which there will be leisure for all and poverty for none.
- We have to learn the language of size in self-defence, because NO SOCIETY is SAFE in the LANDS of its CLEVER PEOPLE.
- A much abused writer of the nineteenth century said: 'up to the PRESENT PHILOSOPHERS have only INTERPRETED the WORLD, it is also NECESSARY to CHANGE it. No statement more fitting by distinguishing the standpoint of HUMANISTIC PHILOSOPHY from the SCIENTIFIC METHOD. SCIENCE is ORGANIZED WORKMANSHIP. Its history is CO-extensive with that of civilized living. It emerges as soon as soon as the secret lore of the craftsmen overflows the dam of oral tradition, demanding a permanent record of its own. It expands as the record becomes accessible to a widening personnel, gathering into itself and coordinating the fruits of new crafts. It languishes when the social incentive to new productive accomplishment is lacking, and when its
custodians lose the will to share it with others. Its history, which is the history of the CONSTRUCTIVE ACHIEVEMENTS of MANKIND, is also the history of the DEMOCRATIZATION of POSITIVE KNOWLEDGE. This book is written to tell the story of its growth as a record of human achievement, a story of the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind, disclosing as it unfolds new horizons of human wellbeing which lie before us, if we plan our new resources intelligently.
Whether we CHOOSE to call it PURE or APPLIED, the story of SCIENCE is not something apart from the common LIFE of MANKIND. What we call pure science only thrives when the contemporary social structure is capable of making full use of its teaching, furnishing it with new problems for solution and equipping it with new instruments for solving them. Without printing there would have been little demand for spectacles, without spectacles neither the telescope nor microscope, without these the finite velocity of light, the annual parallax of the stars, and the micro-organisms of fermentation
processes and disease would never have been known to science. Without the pendulum clock and the projectile there would have been no dynamics nor theory of sound. Without the dynamics of the pendulum and projectile, no PRINCIPIA. Without deep-shaft mining in the sixteenth century, when abundant slave labour was no longer to hand, there would have been no social urge to study pressure, ventilation and explosion. Balloons would not have been invented, chemistry would
have barely surpassed the level reached in the third millennium and the conditions for discovering the electric current would have been lacking.
- Modern society depends for its day-to-day existence on a large corpus of organized and recorded knowledge. Much of it has come into being during the past two centuries. In this sense it is true to say that the pre-eminence of the SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK is characteristic of our own civilization in contradistinction to the civilized societies of antiquity. The fullest use of SCIENCE for HUMAN WELL-BEING will be possible only when our KNOWLEDGE of MATERIAL RESOURCES is supplemented with genuine SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE of HUMAN NEEDS. If we possessed
such knowledge, a concluding section of the book dealing with the story of man's conquest of behaviour might be entitled to more space than two remaining chapters. The little that can be said at this stage has little relevance to the most pressing problems of man's social relations and to his future. What importance is has lies less in showing us how to solve problems of human conduct than in suggesting how they must be stated, if we hope to get an intelligible answer to them. Along the short road which we can traverse as yet, there are no conspicuous milestones of progress. All that we can hope to see are a few legible sign posts pointing ahead of us. The legend they bear is THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK.
At any stage in the story of science conspicuous advances depend on the coincidence of a variety of circumstances the effects of which enforce one another. There must be economic provision for the
livelihood of the investigator and the social apparatus for maintaining a necessary minimum of literacy and continuity with past experience. Natural and social agencies must conspire to force a certain class of problems on the attention of a sufficiently large number of people with the requisite access to pre-existing sources of knowledge. The social structure must be sufficiently plastic to allow powerful social groups to reap the advantages of new discoveries and make provision for rewarding them and encouraging them. These are conditions of scientific progress common to ancient societies and to
our own. Today, as in ancient times, Scientific enquiry attracts the largest emoluments, enlists the largest reserves of ability, and secures the most favourable opportunities for large-scale tests of the
truth of its hypotheses in departments where socially fruitful discoveries are being made In ancient times, as now, great activity in one department of knowledge generally leads to incidental discoveries destined to become the keystone of new successes in a different social context. Such incidental discoveries are the present substance of a science of behaviour.
- No SOCIETY is safe in the hands of so few CLEVER people.
l2.Alfred Russel Wallace "was great because he added to the scientific knowledge of his time; but greater, because he was inflamed with a LOFTY IDEALISM that sought to PLACE the POSSIBILITIES of SCIENCE at the SERVICE of MANKIND. He stood out from his contemporaries as the one great scientist who had the faith and the courage to devote his thought to the experiment of reorganising society on the FOUNDATION of GOODWILL, the one great investigator who after a long life of
unretiring research, still retained the DIVINE MADNESS of YOUTH and the vision of the city BEAUTiFUL.
His mentality was never cramped by an academic training, and his youth was passed, not in the sheltered seclusion of public school life, but in intimate context with the vital problems of everyday
existence . . . . The academics are rarely the home of new thought; they are most conspicuously the CLEARING HOUSE for OBSOLETE IDEAS .
- Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich
Free the CHILD from the state of innocent but limited instinct and lead it from the state of nature onto the path where it meets CULTURE. I have to awaken its humanness, its HIGHER NEED, and then provide it with the means for trying to satisfy this higher need.
- Holland, Josiah Gilbert
MUSIC is a thing of the SOUL - a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea - a strange bird singing the song of another shore.
- Holland, William J.
When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry-red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the ice-cap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . . when all cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny INSECT, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, representing the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth - a melancholy bug.
- Holmes, Sr. Oliver Wendell
- The great end of being is to HARMONIZE man with the order of things, and the CHURCH has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
- MUSIC can be translated only by music. Just so far as it suggests WORDED THOUGHT, it falls short of its highest office.
-
Alas for those that never SING
But die with all their MUSIC in them.
-
The GREAT thing
in this world
is not so much
where we are
but in what DIRECTION
we are moving.
- TAXES are what we pay for CIVILIZED society.
-
If at every turn we had to construct SCIENCE anew out of science alone, without the guidance of STYLE and knowledge in their widest sense, how could we hope to catch this complex and infinitely fascinating world with our minds at all?
- Holub, Miroslav
We have
a map of the UNIVERSE
for microbes,
we have
a map of a MICROBE
for the universe.
- Homer
-
To follow KNOWLEDGE like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
- Nothing feebler than a MAN does the EARTH raise up,
of all the things which breathe and move on the EARTH.
for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future,
as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes
in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows
too to pass, even then he BEARS, against his will, with
steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly MEN are like
the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.
- MEN flourish only for a moment.
4."Miserable MORTALS who, like leaves, at one moment FLAME
with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly PERISH.
- Hooper, Clarice
April waits, so how can snow and blank trees be UNBEARABLE?
- Hopkins, Frank
There is a FEELING among us that no kind of CHRISTIANITY is psychologically suited to our time and civilization, that we need less faith in the supernatural and more in the COURAGE and intelligence of
HUMAN BEINGS.
- Hopkins, Sir Frederick Gowland
It is, I think, difficult to exaggerate the importance to biology, and I venture to say to chemistry no less, of extended studies of ENZYMES and their action.
- Hopkins, Gerard Manley
0 the MIND, MIND has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
- Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus
The SUN, the STARS and season as
they pass - some can gaze upon these
with no strain of fear.
- Howel, Martin
If the icy hill is too steep to climb, CHANGE your DIRECTION.
- Hoyle, Sir Fred
- Once a photograph of the EARTH, taken from the outside, is available . . . a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.
- Perhaps the most majestic feature of our whole existence is that while our INTELLIGENCE are powerful enough to penetrate deeply into the evolution of this quite incredible universe, we still have not the smallest clue to our own fate.
- Hsün-tze, Xun Zi
You glorify NATURE and meditate on her;
Why not domesticate her and regulate her?
You obey nature and sing her praise;
Why not control her course and use it?
You look upon the seasons with reverence, and await them;
Why not respond to them by seasonly activities?
You depend on things and marvel at them;
Why not unfold your own ability and transform them?
- Hu Shih
- The most outstanding characteristic of Eastern CIVILIZATION is to know CONTENTMENT, whereas that of Western CIVILIZATION is not to know contentment.
- The CIVILIZATION under which people are restricted and controlled by a material ENVIRONMENT from which they cannot ESCAPE, and under which they cannot UTILIZE human thought and INTELLECTUAL POWER to change ENVIRONMENT and improve conditions, is the CIVILIZATION of a lazy and nonprogressive people. It is a truly materialistic civilization.
- The KNOWLEDGE that MANKIND needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, arbitrary, vague, without existence, and cannot be demonstrated.
- Contact with strange civilizations brings new standards of value, with which the native culture is re-examined and re-evaluated, and conscious REFORMATION and REGENERATION are the natural outcome.
- Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging TRUTH or ABSOLUTE TRUTH can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual RESPONSIBILITY.
- Hubbard, Elbert Green
- LITTLE MINDS are interested in the extraordinary; GREAT MINDS in
the commonplace.
- One MACHINE can do the WORK of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of an EXTRAORDINARY MAN.
- Keep away from the wheelbarrow! What the hell do you know about complicated MACHINERY?
- POWER flows to the man who knows how.
- Hudson, William Henry
You cannot fly like an EAGLE with the wings of a wren.
- Hughes, Charles
I believe in WORK, hard work and long hours of work. MEN do not break down from OVERWORK, but from worry and dissipation."
- Hughes, Langston
Hold fast to DREAMS
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
- Hugo, Victor Marie
- A COMPLIMENT is something like a kiss through a veil.
- There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an IDEA whose time has come.
- LIFE is the flower of which love is the honey.
- LIFE closes in the TWILIGHT, but opens in the DAWN."
- There is always more MISERY among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
- MUSIC expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be SILENT.
- So long as there shall be ignorance, POVERTY and wretchedness on this earth, stories such as this one must be told.
- There is one SPECTACLE grander than the sea that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the SOUL.
- LIFE closes in the twilight, but opens in the dawn.
'
- Hume, David
- No TESTIMONY is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours too establish.
- What though these reasonings concerning HUMAN NATURE seem abstract and of difficult comprehension, this affords no presumption of their FALSEHOOD. On the contrary, it seems impossible that what has hitherto escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be
very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these researches may cost us, we may think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit but of pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance.
- Hunecker, James
BRAHMS pours the new wine of the ROMANTICISTS into the old bottles of the CLASSICS.
- >Hunt, James Henry Leigh
If we can conceive no end of space,
why shall we conceive an end of new CREATIONS,
whatever our poor little bounds of historical time
might even appear to argue to the contrary.
- Hutchins. Robert Maynard
- . . . thought implies CRITICISM, and criticism of a social, political,
and economic system to which one is looking for admiration and support is impossible unless the public, through a long course of education and demonstration has become convinced that THOUGHT, including criticism, is the purpose of the university, that this is what it exists for, and that independent thought and criticism are indispensable to the improvement, and perhaps even the survival of any society.
- EQUALITY and JUSTICE, the two great distinguishing characteristics of DEMOCRACY, follow INEVITABLY from the conception of men, all me, as RATIONAL and SPIRITUAL beings.
- The death of DEMOCRACY is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow EXTINCTION from apathy, indifference, and under-nourishment.
- More FREE 'TIME means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk, beat his wife - and watch TV.
- We who say, then, that we believe in democracy cannot content ourselves with VIRTUAL EDUCATION any more than we can with virtual REPRESENTATION. We have not the option of deciding for ourselves whether or not we shall be liberal artists, because we are committed
to the proposition that all men shall be free. We cannot admit that ordinary people cannot have a good EDUCATION, because we cannot agree that democracy must involve a degradation of the human ideal. Anything less than the effort to help EVERYBODY get the best EDUCATION
necessarily implies that some cannot achieve in their own measure the HUMAN IDEAL. We cannot concede that the conquest of nature, the conquest of drudgery, and the conquest of political power must lead in combination to triviality in education and hence in all the other occupations of life. The aim of EDUCATION is WISDOM, and EACH must have the chance to become as WISE as he can.
- LEARNING is in principle and should be in fact the highest common good, to be defended as a right and worked for as an end. ALL men are capable of learning, according to their abilities. Learning does not stop as long as man lives, unless his learning power atrophies because he does not use it. Political freedom cannot last without provision for free unlimited acquisition of knowledge. Truth is not long retained in human affairs without continual learning and relearning. A political order is tyrannical if it is not rational.
- aim of LIBERAL EDUCATION is human excellence, both private and public (for man is a political animal). Its object is the excellence of MAN as MAN and MAN as CITIZEN. It regards man as an
end, not as a means, and it regards the END of life, and not the means to it. For this reason it is the education of free men. 0ther types of education or training treat men as means to some other end,
or are at best concerned with the means of life, with earning a living, and not with its ends.
The substance of LIBERAL EDUCATION appears to consist in the recognition of basic problems, in knowledge of distinctions and interrelations in subject matter, and in the comprehension of ideas.
- We believe that the reduction of the CITIZEN to an object of PROPAGANDA, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people
cannot understand and cannot form an independent JUDGMENT upon any matter; they cannot be EDUCATED, in the sense of developing their intellectual power, but they can be bamboozled. The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of PROPAGANDA that beats upon the citizen twenty four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall a prey to the loudest and most persistent PROPAGANDIST or that the people must save themselves by
strengthening their minds so that they can appreciate the issues for themselves.
- The crucial ERROR is that of holding that nothing is any more IMPORTANT than anything else, that there can be no ORDER of goods and no order in the INTELLECTUAL REALM.
- Huxley, Aldous Leonard
-
BLOOD of the world, TIME staunchless flows;
The wound is mortal and is mine.
- A bad BOOK is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
- Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of CRITICISMS.
- FACTS do not cease .to exist because they are ignored.
- Even if I could be SHAKESPEARE, I think I should still choose to be FARADAY.
- The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is highly organized, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern, and the molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattern; but the stone, although it is made up of these PATTERNS, is just a mere confusion. It's only when LIFE appears that you begin to get organisation on a larger scale. Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of its own.
- One never LOVES enough.
It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little KINDER to each other.
-
A poor degenerate from the APE,
Whose hands are four, whose tail's limb.
I contemplate my flaccid shape
And know I may not rival him
Save with my MIND.
- After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is MUSIC.
A totally UNMYSTICAL world would be a world totally BLIND and INSANE.
- There's one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own SELF.
- There is no SUBSTITUTE for TALENT. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.
- Huxley, Sir Julian
- No single link can be said to be LIVING; no hard and fast line can be drawn between living and non-living. LIFE, from the viewpoint of the scientific observer, is a self-regulating, selfrepairing
PHYSIO-CHEMICAL complex MECHANISM.
- The clear light of science, we are often told, has abolished MYSTERY, leaving only logic and reason. This is quite untrue. SCIENCE has removed the obscurity veil of mystery from many phenomena, much to the benefit of the human race: but it confronts us with a basic and universal mystery - the mystery of existence in general, and of the existence of mind in particular. Why does the world exist? Why is the world-stuff what it is? Why does it have mental or subjective aspects as well as material or objective ones? We do not know. All we can do is to admit the facts.
- . . . the essence of RELIGION springs from man's capacity for awe and reverence, that the objects of religion . . . are in origin and essence those events, and ideas which arouse the FEELING of SACREDNESS.
- Huxley, Thomas Henry
- It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. That is what AGNOSTICISM asserts.
- The GREAT END of LIFE is not knowledge but ACTION.
- Men of SCIENCE do not pledge themselves to CREEDS; they are bound by articles of not sort; there is not a single BELIEF that is not a bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand and to part with it, cheerfully the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small. And if in course of time I see good reasons for such a proceeding, I shall have no hesitation in coming before you, and pointing out any change in my opinion without finding the slightest occasion to blush for so doing. So I say that we accept this view as we accept any other, so long as it will help us, and we feel bound to retain it only so long as it will serve our great purpose - the improvement of Man's estate and the widening of his knowledge. The moment this, or any of the CONCEPTION, ceases to be useful for these purposes, away with it to the four winds; we care not what becomes of it!
- The CHESS-BOARD is the world; the pieces are the PHENOMENA of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the LAWS of NATURE. Ihe player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for IGNORANCE.
- EDUCATION is the instruction of the intellect in the LAWS of NATURE, under which name I include not merely things and their forces but men and their ways, and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in HARMONY with
these LAWS.
- My belief is that no human being or SOCIETY composed of human beings ever did or ever will come to much unless their conduct was GOVERNED and GUIDED by the LOVE of some ETHICAL IDEA.
- SOCIAL PROGRESS means a CHECKING of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which ma be called the ETHICAL PROCESS.
- There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few FAILURES early in life.
- From the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to FIGHT - whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given ( . . . .). In the cycles of phenomena presented by the life of man, the animal, no more moral end is discernible that in that presented by the life of the wolf and the
deer ( . . . ). So among primitive men, the weakest and the stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in any other sense, survived. Life was a continuous free FIGHT and, beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence ( . . . ). But the effect of ethical man to work toward a moral end by no means abolished, perhaps hashardly modified, the deep-seated organic impulses which impel the natural man to follow his non-moral code ( . . . ).
- THOUGHTFULNESS for OTHERS, GENEROSITY, MODESTY, and SELF-RESPECT are the QUALITIES that make a real GENTLEMAN or LADY, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name.
- Until HUMAN LIFE is longer and the duties of the present press less heavily, I do not think that wise men will occupy themselves with Jovian or Martian natural history.
- The tragedy of science is a BEAUTIFUL HYPOTHESIS slain by an UGLY FACT.
13."All science starts with HYPOTHESES - in other words, with assumptions that are unproved, while they may be, and often are erroneous, but which are better than nothing to the searcher after
order in the maze of phenomena. And the historical process of every SCIENCE depends on the criticism of hypotheses - on the gradual stripping off, that is, of their untrue or superfluous parts - until
there remains only that exact verbal expression of as much as we know of the facts, and no more, which constitutes a perfect scientific theory.
- The great deeds of philosophers have been less the fruit of their INTELLECT than the direction of that intellect by an eminently RELIGIOUS tone of mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to their
PATIENCE, their LOVE,-their SINGLE-HEARTEDNESS and SELF-DENIAL than to their logical acumen.
- If a little KNOWLEDGE is dangerous, where is the man who has so MUCH as to be out of danger?
- I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil is inseparably woven up in the LIFE of the very WORMS, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.
The question of questions for MANKIND - the problem which underlies all others, - is the ascertainment of the PLACE which MAN OCCUPIES in NATURE and of his RELATIONS to the UNIVERSE of THINGS. Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us, to what goal are we tending; are the problems which present
themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respect and respectable tradition. But, in EVERY AGE, one or two RESTLESS SPIRITS blessed with that CONSTRUCTIVE GENIUS, which can only BUILD on a SECURE FRONTIER, or
CURSED with the MERE SPIRIT of SCEPTICISM are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike
out into PATHS of their OWN. The SCEPTICS end in the INFIDELITY which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the ATHEISM which denies the EXISTENCE of any ORDERLY PROGRESS and GOVERNMENT of THINGS: the men of GENIUS propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of PHILOSOPHY, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the POETRY of an EPOCH.
Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one
century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a MERE APPROXIMATION to the TRUTH - tolerable chiefly on account of the IGNORANCE of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly INTOLERABLE when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.
- To a person uninstructed in NATURAL HISTORY, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with WONDERFUL works of ART, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
SCIENCE is ORGANIZED COMMON SENSE where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
- The METHOD of SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION is nothing but the
expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.
- The improver of NATURAL KNOWLEDGE absolutely refuses to acknowledge AUTHORITY, as such. For him, SCEPTICISM is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
- Exstinguished THEOLOGIANS lie about the CRADLE of every SCIENCE as the strangled snakes beside the cradle of Hercules.
- The THOUGHTS of men are comparable to the leaves, flowers, and fruit upon the innumerable branches of a few great stems, fed by commingled and hidden roots. These stems bear the names of the half-dozen men, endowed with intellects of HEROIC force and CLEARNESS.
- TIME, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against TRUTH!
- Irrationally held TRUTHS may be more harmful than REASONED ERRORS.
- It is the customary fate of NEW TRUTHS to begin as HERESIES and to end as SUPERSTITIONS.
- The KNOWN is finite, the UNKNOWN infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of INEXPLICABILITY. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.
- VERACITY is in the heart of MORALITY.
- The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is WISDOM.