- The last symphony of BEETHOVEN seems to have shaken me physically, releasing my musical fervent. The NINTH SYMPHONY of BEETHOVEN is the redemption of MUSIC from out of her peculiar element into the reealm of UNIVERSAL ART. It is the human evangel of the ART of the FUTURE. Beyond it no further step is possible, for upon it the perfect art work of the future alone can follow: the universal drama for which BEETHOVEN forged the key.
- Melody has by BEETHOVEN been freed from the influence of Fashion and changing Taste, and raised to an ever-valid, purely human type. BEETHOVEN'S music will be understood to all times, while that of his predecessors will for the most part, only remain intelligible to us through the medium of reflection on the history of art.
- I let myself be guided without fear by my INSTINCT. I am being used as the instrument for something higher than my own being warrants תתת I am in the hands of the IMMORTAL GENIUS that I serve for the span of my life and that intends me to complete only what I can achieve . . . Some critics feel that I regard myself as a god תתת I am not made like other people. I must have brilliance and beauty and light. The world owes me what I need. I can't live on a miserable organist's pittance like your master Bach.
- the pleasure which we derive from BEAUTIFUL FORMS . . .
- the AESTHETIC FORM (of music) must itself be determined by the artist's INNER INTUITION of the IDEA.
- The last symphony of BEETHOVEN seems to have shaken me physically, releasing my musical fervent. The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven is the redemption of music from out of her peculiar element into the realm of UNIVERSAL ART. It is the human evangel of the art of the future. Beyond it no further step is possible, for upon it the perfect art work of the future alone can follow: the universal drama for which Beethoven forged the key.
- WE ARE NOT ALONE in the UNIVERSE, and do not bear alone the whole burden of LIFE and what comes of it. LIFE is a cosmic event - so far as we know the most complex state of organization that MATTER has achieved in our COSMOS. It has come many times, in many places - places closed off from us by impenetrable distances, probably never to be crossed even with a signal. As men we can attempt to understand it, and even somewhat to control and guide its local manifestations. On this planet that is our home, we have every reason to wish it well. Yet should we fail, all it not lost. Our kind will try again elsewhere.
- What it means to bring the ORIGIN of LIFE within the realm of NATURAL PHENOMENA is to imply that in all these places LIFE probably exists - LIFE as we know it. Indeed, I am convinced that there can be no way of COMPOSING and CONSTRUCTING LIVING ORGANISMS which is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from the one we know - though this is another argument, and must wait another occasion. Wherever LIFE is possible, given time, it should arise. It should then ramify into a wide array of forms, differing in detail from those we now observe (as did earlier organisms on the earth) yet including many which should look familiar to us - perhaps even men.
- MATTER has reached the point of BEGINNING to KNOW ITSELF . . . [MAN is] a STAR'S way of KNOWING about STARS.
- All LIFE on this planet runs on SUNLIGHT.
- You cannot hold a man DOWN without staying DOWN with him.
- For my RACE, one of the DANGERS is that it may grow IMPATIENT and feel that it can get upon its feet by articicial and superficial efforts rather than by the SLOWER but SURER process which means one step at a time through all the constructive grades of industrial, mental, moral and social development which all RACES have had to follow that have become independent and strong.
- O God, our help in AGES past Our HOPE for years to come Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our ETERNAL home. Beneath the shadows of Thy Throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is Thine Arm alone, And our defence is sure. Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame, From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same. A thousand AGES in thy sight Are like an evening gone, Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun. TIME, like an ever-rolling stream, Bear all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.
- How doth the LITTLE BUSY BEE IMPROVE each shining hour, And GATHER honey all the day From EVERY opening flower!"
- For SATAN finds some MISCHIEF still For IDLE hands to do.
- Hush! may dear, lie STILL and SLUMBER, Holy angels guard thy bed. Heavenly blessings without number GENTLY FALLING on thy head.
- When I survey the wondrous CROSS, On which the PRINCE of GLORY died, May richest gain I count but loss And your contempt on all my pride. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; LOVE so amazing, so DIVINE, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
- There is a land of pure DELIGHT, Where saints immortal reign; INFINTE DAY excludes the NIGHT, And PLEASURES banish PAIN.
- Let dogs delight to BARK and BITE, For God hath made them so; Let bears and lions GROWL and FIGHT, For 'tis their NATURE too. But children, you should never let Such ANGRY PASSION arise; Your little hands were never made To tear each other's eyes. BIRDS in their little nests AGREE; And t'is a shameful sight, When children of one family Fall out, and chide, and FIGHT."
- JESUS shall reign where e'er the sun Does his successive jouney's run; His kingdom stretch from shore ro shore TILL MOONS shall WAX and WANE no more."
- 'Tis the voice of the SLUGGARD, I hear him complain: `You have WAKED me too soon, I must SLUMBER again'. As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavenly head.
- The CRIMINAL LAW is not FOUNDED on the principle of VENGEANCE; it uses EVIL only as a means of PREVENTING greater EVIL.
- If we work upon marble it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon IMMORTAL MINDS, if we imbue them with principles, with JUST FEAT of GOD and LOVE of our FELLOW MEN, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all ETERNITY.
- There is nothing so powerful as the TRUTH, and often nothing so STRANGE.
- HUMILITY is above all one of the qualities of ATTENTION.
- There is something MYSTERIOUS in the UNIVERSE which is in COMPLICITY with those who LOVE nothing but the GOOD.
- Above all, in judging the OPENNESS of SCIENCE, one should remember its unique capacity for DISCOVERING its own MISTAKES. Most natural scientists have the experience several times in their lives of being forced by new data or mathematical demonstrations to RECOGNIZE that they have been seriously WRONG about some important issue. (For instance,I was sure that Lee and Young were wrong when they first proposed that parity is not conserved, and became convinced only by subsequent experiments.) On a large scale, the physics community has many times been forced by new data to scrap large bodies of existing theory. If this takes away from our reputation for INFALLIBILITY, it should also take away the impression that our mind are CLOSED.
- The effort to UNDERSTAND the UNIVERSE is one of the very few things that lift human life a little above the level of FARCE and give it some of the grace of TRAGEDY.
- PHYSICAL REALITY remains so MYSTERIOUS even to PHYSICISTS because of the extreme IMPRABABILITY that it was constructed to be UNDERSTOOD by the HUMAN MIND.
- Human existence is based upon two pillars: COMPASSION and KNOWLEDGE. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; knowledge without compassion is inhuman.
- Parts and all aspects of SCIENCE belong together. Science cannot develop unless it is pursued for the sake of PURE KNOWLEDGE and INSIGHT. It will not survive unless it is used INTENSELY and WISELY for the betterment of numanity and not as an instrument of DOMINATION by one group over another.
- In MAN'S brain the IMPRESSIONS from outside are not merely registered; they produce CONCEPTS and IDEAS. They are the IMPRINT of the external world upon the HUMAN brain. Therefore it is not surprising that, after a long period of searching and erring, some of the CONCEPTS and IDEAS in HUMAN thinking should have come gradually closer to the fundamental laws of this world, that some of our thinking should reveal the true structure of atoms and the true movements of the stars. NATURE, in the FORM of MAN, BEGINS to RECOGNIZE ITSELF.
- . . . involved in man's thought and action in many different and often contradictory ways. SCIENCE must coexist with other forms of man's URGES, FEELINGS, and SELF-REALIZATIONS. SCIENCE is based upon a very fundamental human URGE, man's INNATE DESIRE to KNOW and UNDERSTAND the UNIVERSE in which he lives and to gain INSIGHT into the driving forces governing the world around him. Ths URGE is paired with the DESIRE to improve the precarious conditions of human existence in an inhospitable natural environment and in COMPETITION with other human societies. Man DESIRES to INFLUENCE and to CHANGE the material and social conditions of life with the help of acquired KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE, which, in modern times, are mainly derived from SCIENCE. As in all human situations, the URGES and DESIRES do not always lead to actions that serve the intended purposes, and the intended purposes are not such that real benefits accrue for the people involved . . .
- As part of our culture, SCIENCE has much in common with the ARTS. New forms and ideas are CREATED in order to express relations of man to his environment. However the influence of SCIENCE on SOCIETY, on our lives and our thinking, is much greater today the the positive and negative sense; there have been times in the past in which the ARTS had a similar influence. SCIENCE is a unique product of our period. SCIENCE differs from contemporary ARTISTIC CREATIONS by its COLLECTIVE character. A SCIENTIFIC achievement may be the result of the work of one individual, but its SIGNIFICANCE rests solely upon its role as a part of a single edifice erected by the COLLECTIVE effort of past and present generations of SCIENTISTS. This effort was and is made by SCIENTISTS all over the world; the character of the contributions do not reflect their national, racial, or geographic origin. SCIENCE is a TRULY UNIVERSAL human enterprise: The same questions are asked by all men involved in SCIENCE; the same JOY of INSIGHT is experienced when a new aspect of deeper COHERENCE is found in the fabric of NATURE. The choices of problems, the directions of research at the frontier of fundamental SCIENCE depend much less upon the economic, social, and political needs and pressures than most people assume; They are determined mainly by the instrumental possibilities of observation and by the internal logic of fundamental SCIENCE itself. This is not so in APPLIED SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY, which obviously are much more - though not completely - subject to social demands of all kinds . . .
- It is difficult to distinguish clearly between FUNDAMENTAL and APPLIED SCIENCE, and any considerations of this kind can lead to DANGEROUS OVERSIMPLIFICATONS. The success of BASIC research derives to a large extent from the close cooperation of BASIC and APPLIED SCIENCE. This close relation - often within the same SCIENTIST - provided tools of high quality, without which many FUNDAMENTAL discoveries could not have been made.
- PHYSICS BEGINS by FACING a MYSTERY. It transforms the MYSTERY into a PUZZLE. It solves the PUZZLE. And it finds itself FACING a new MYSTERY.
- Diagnosticians require infinite PATIENCE in their investigations, and they must cultivate their awareness of INCONSPICUOUS SYMPTOMS, the HIDDEN CAUSES of great effects. PLANNING will be possible and NECESSARY in INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, the ECONOMY, the SOCIAL STRUCTURE, the HEALTH SYSTEM, EDUCATION, and many other fields. PLANNING is UNAVOIDABLE in a scientific world like ours. It is certainly easier to plan a MACHINE than the behaviour of people who wish to exercise their FREE WILL. And so it is easier to PLAN people's behaviour when we treat them as if they were machines. It is easier to PLAN SERVITUDE than LIBERTY.
- Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY than the RAPIDITY with which WAR was becoming possible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the ATOMIC BOMB burst in their fumbling hands.
- The CATASTROPHE of the ATOMIC BOMBS which shook men out of cities and business and economic relations, shook them also out of their OLD-ESTABLISHED HABITS of THOUGHTS, and out of the lightly held BELIEFS and PREJUDICES that came down to them from the past.
- Over great areas of the world it still survives: it is possible that in contact with western science, and inspired by the spirit of history, the original teaching of Gautama, REVIVED and PURIFIED, may yet play a large part in the DIRECTION of HUMAN DESTINY.
- HUMAN HISTORY becomes more and more a RACE between EDUCATION and CATASTROPHE.
- For Man, there is no rest and no ending: He must go on, CONQUEST beyond CONQUEST, And when he has CONQUERED all the deep of SPACE And all the mystery of TIME, Still he will be at the BEGINNING.
- The CRISIS of TODAY is the joke of TOMORROW.
- HUMAN HISTORY is in ESSENCE a HISTORY of IDEAS.
- Every one of these hundreds of millions of HUMAN BEINGS is in some form seeking HAPPINESS תתת Not one is altogether NOBLE nor altogether TRUSTWORTHY nor altogether CONSISTENT; and not one is altogether VILE . . . Not a single one but has at some time WEPT.
- As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles away it was from us - more than forty millions of VOID. Few people realise the IMMENSITY of VACANCY in which the DUST of the MATERIAL UNIVERSE swims. Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the UNFATHOMABLE DARKNESS of EMPTY SPACE. You know how that BLACKNESS looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far PROFOUNDER. And visible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.
- LIFE begins PERPETUALLY. Gathered together at last under the LEADERSHIP of MAN . . . unified, disciplined, armed with the secret powers of the ATOM and with KNOWLEDGE as yet beyond dreaming, LIFE, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a FOOTSTOOL, and stretch out its realm amidst the STARS.
- A day may come when these RECOVERED MEMORIES may grow as vivid as if we in our own persons had been there and shaped the thrill and fear of those primordial days; a day may come when the great beasts of the past will leap to life again in our IMAGINATIONS, when we shall walk again in vanished scenes, stretched painted limbs we thought were dud, and feel again the sunshine of a million years ago.
- The PROFESSIONAL MILITARY MIND is by necessity an INFERIOR and UNIMAGINATIVE MIND; no man of high INTELLECTUAL quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.
- Across the gulf of space, MINDS that are to our MINDS as ours are to those of the beasts that PERISH, INTELLECTS VAST and COOL and UNSYMPATHETIC, regarded this earth with ENVIOUS eyes, and slowly and surely drew their PLANS against us.
- Our TRUE NATIONALITY is MANKIND.
- NEW and STIRRING things are BELITTLED because if they are not belittled, the HUMILIATING question arises, Why are you not taking part in them?
- The Past is but the BEGINNING of a BEGINNING, and all that is and has been is but the TWILIGHT of the DAWN.
- It becomes a bore doing IMAGINATION BOOKS that do not touch IMAGINATION and at length one stops even planning them. I think I am better employed now NEARER REALITY, TRYING to make a WORKING ANALYSIS of our DEEPENING SOCIAL PERPLEXITIES in such labours as the WORK, WEALTH and HAPPINESS of MANKIND and AFTER DEMOCRACY. The world in the presence of cataclysmal REALITIES has no need for fresh CATACLYSMAL FANTASIES. That game is over. Who wants the invented humours of Mr. Parham in Whitehall, when day by day we can watch Mr.Hitler in Germany? What HUMAN INVENTION can PIT ITSELF AGAINST the FANTASTIC FUN of the FATES? I am wrong in GRUMBLING at REVIEWERS. REALITY has taken a LEAF FROM my BOOK and set itself to supersede me.
- SCIENCE is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that his light would be reflected form and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philisophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty h anticipated - darkness still.
- One cannot choose but WONDER. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Jurassic times. He may even now - if I may use the phrase - be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the RIDDLE of our OWN TIME ANSWERED and its WEARISOME PROBLEMS SOLVED? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory and mutual discord are indeed MAN'S CULMINATING TIME. I say, for my own part. He, I know - for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the ADVANCEMENT of MANKIND, and saw in the GROWING PILE of CIVILISATION only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. It it is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank - is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange little flowers - shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness even when MIND and STRENGTH had gone, GRATITUDE and a MUTUAL TENDERNESS still lived on in the HEART of MAN.
- The WAR that will END WAR.
- The GREAT WAR and the PETTY PEACE.
- And yet SCIENCE would perish without a supporting transcendental FAITH in TRUTH and REALITY, and without the continuous interplay between its facts and constructions on the one hand and the IMAGERY of IDEAS on the other.
- There is inherent in NATURE a HIDDEN HARMONY that reflects itself in our minds under the image of SIMPLE MATHEMATICAL LAWS. That then is the reason why events in NATURE are predictable by a combination of observation and MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS. Again and again in the history of physics this conviction, or should I say DREAM, of HARMONY in NATURE has found fulfillment beyond our expectation.
- The individual LAWS of PHYSICS no more than those of GEOMETRY admit of an EXPERIENTAL CHECK if each is considered by itself, but a CONSTRUCTION THEORY can only be put to the test as whole.
- Without the CONCEPTS, METHODS and RESULTS FOUND and DEVELOPED by PREVIOUS GENERATIONS right down to GREEK ANTIQUITY one cannot UNDERSTAND either the AIMS or the ACHIEVEMENTS of MATHEMATICS in the last fifty years.
- MATHEMATIZING may well be a CREATIVE ACTIVITY of MAN, like LANGUAGE or MUSIC, of PRIMARY ORIGINALITY, whose historical decisions defy completely objective RATIONALIZATIONS.
- It must be admitted that the MEANING of QUATUM PHYSICS, in spite of all its achievements, is not yet clarified as thoroughly as, for instance, the ideas underlying relativity theory. The relation of REALITY and OBSERVATION is the central problem. We seem to need a DEEPER EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS of what constitutes an experiment, a measurement, and what sort of language is used to communicate its results. Is it that of classical physics, as LIELS BOHR seems to think, or is it the 'natural language', in which everyone in the conduct of his daily life encounters the world, his fellow men, and himself? The analogy with HILBERT'S mathematics, where the practical manipulation of concrete symbols rather than the data of some 'pure consciousness' serves as the essential extralogical basis, seems to suggest the latter. Does this mean that the development of modern mathematics and physics points in the same direction as the movement in current philosophy, away from an IDEALIST toward an EXISTENTIAL standpoint?
- One of the great differences between the SCIENTIST and the IMPATIENT PHILOSOPHER is that the SCIENTIST bides his time. We must AWAIT the further development of SCIENCE, perhaps for centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, before we can design a true and detailed picture of the INTERWOVEN TECTURE of MATTER, LIFE and SOUL. But the old classical DETERMINISM of HOBBES and LAPLACE need not oppress us any longer.
- Modern SCIENCE in so far as I am familiar with it through my own scientific work, MATHEMATICS and PHYSICS make the world appear more and more as an open one, as a world not closed but pointing beyond itself . . . SCIENCE finds itself compelled, at once by the epistemological, the physical and the constructive-mathematical aspect of its own methods and results, to recognize this situation. It remains to be added that SCIENCE can do no more than show us this open horizon; we must not by including the transcendental sphere attempt to establish anew a closed (though more comprehensive) world.
- SYMMETRY, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to COMPREHEND and CREATE ORDER, BEAUTY, and PERFECTION.
- The WORLD does not HAPPEN, it simply IS.
- Nothing is more important about the QUANTUM PRINCIPLE than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as 'sitting out there;, with the OBSERVER safely separated from it by a 20 centimeter slab of plate glass. Even to observe so miniscule an object as an electron he must shatter the class. He MUST REACH IN. He must install his chosen measuring equipment. It is up to him to decide whether he shall measure position or momentum. To install the equipment to measure the one prevents and excludes his installing the equipment to measure the other. Moreover, the MEASUREMENT will NEVER AFTERWARDS be the SAME. To describe what has happened, one has to cross the old word 'OBSERVER' and put in its place the new world 'PARTICIPATOR'. In some STRANGE SENSE the UNIVERSE is a PARTICIPATING UNIVERSE.
- Every LAW of PHYSICS . . . GOES BACK to some SYMMETRY of NATURE.
- If LIFE is a cosmic ACCIDENT and humanity the transient and CHANCE result of such an ACCIDENT, then there is nothing to prevent the ENSLAVEMENT and DESTRUCTION of human beings by their fellows. The DIGNITY enshrined in art; the ineffable sense of the wonder of life; the profound awareness of the human predicament; all these have no place in a SCIENTIFIC WORLD VIEW which reduces everything to a matter of impersonal STATISTICS.
- The AIM of LIFE and the business of EDUCATION should be the development of the ability to INTERPRET EXPERIENCE to the end of PERCEIVING REALITY. And this REALITY is something which cannot be measured , analysed, reduced to constituent parts or embalmed in a set of rules. It is something which is perceived through the work of ART, through RELIGION, through SCIENCE or through the ACT of PROFOUNDLY LIVING. In the last it cannot be described but felt, and the true expression of our deeper feelings is, for the most of mankind, achieved through the medium of ART, whether it be of poetry, music, painting or folk-song. With the simplest means, human beings have constructed edifices of TRUTH and SIGNIFICANCE which have enabled them not only to survive, not only to achieve a balance with their environment: they have left to us as enduring witnesses of MAN'S DIGNITY and COURAGE the works of ART by which even today we choose to acknowledge and revere a culture or civilization.
- Not that in themselves there is anything wrong with the MATERIAL COMFORTS which SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY can provide. The PURPOSES to which they are put, and the way in which they are allowed to obscure the TRUE NATURE of LIFE, is what makes them bad. We have wonderful and superb MEANS, it is the END to which we put them that are debased. With the extra time, money and machines at our command yet we have no sense of how to use them for civilized living; and in many young people we sense a partial awareness of this: in the way they turn their back on the past, and express the malaise by seemingly OUTRAGEOUS or AGGRESSIVE modes of dress and behaviour; in many cases the last acts available to them that are positive and assertive (yet tragically NIHILISTIC): the act of DESTRUCTION.
- One of the great tragedies of modern life is the fact that SEXUALITY is divorced from its PRIMAL FUNCTIONS and MEANINGS; it is suppressed and appears exclusively as direct or indirect inducements to GENITAL EXCITATION. It manifests itself as an individual source of SENSORY GRATIFICATION, and this reversal of SEXUAL VALUES is ENCOURAGED and CONFIRMED by our society, which taboes frank discussion or investigation of the subject, leaves young children to a large extent in uninformed IGNORANCE, and IGNORES it at any level of polite society. Yet all the time the press, advertising, the cinema and all other forms of mass entertainment and diversion are orientated towards EROTIC STIMULUS and GRATIFICATION, without any reference to the process or to its great and vital dignity. One of the greatest achievements of the human spirit was to elevate SEX into LOVE; today we have debased LOVE into a narrow and perverted form of SEX.
- There is in mankind a POTENTIAL, existing in terms of TENSION within an ENVIRONMENT. To MASTER his ENVIRONMENT, to bring it harmoniously within the grasp of his imagination and conscious comprehension, is mankind's most vital task. The POTENTIAL can be destructive or it can be creative; this is mankind's choice and in this choice he can only be assisted by the forms of ART and the functions of RELIGION. Out of the conflict between man and his ENVIRONMENT he must create SYMBOLS which ENLARGE the MEANING of EXISTENCE, and relate him finally to a unity and a reality which transcends the world of phenomenal existence.
- In my teaching experience I have found the need among students for a work which will draw together in a small compass, an account of man's artistic development related to his evolution and social progress.
Fundamentally, ALL of MAN'S ACTIVITIES - his ART, SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE and WORK - are SYMBOLIC of his OWN NATURE and his UNDERSTANDING of the WORLD. They are an integral part of his EXPERIENCE, and only recently in human history have they been FRAGMENTED into self-contained disciplines.
Through the examination of the SYMBOLISM in MYTHY, RITUAL and ART, I have attempted to present an integrated view of MAN'S ACTIVITIES, and to show through their underlying associations, that man is part of a unity from which he draws the MEANING of his EXISTENCE.
- What I am principally concerned with is the POWER and EFFICACY of the SYMBOL in HUMAN LIFE and ART; that it is in fact through the ACTIVITY of CREATIVE SYMBOLS that man is able to LIVE LIFE to its full, that through the SYMBOL he is able to perceive the deepest TRUTHS in HUMAN NATURE and
EXPERIENCE, and to find some assuage for the soul that 'EVER HUNGERS AFER TRUTH' within the COMPLEXITY of EXISTENCE.
The greatness of human culture is the depth and power of its attempt to master the COMPLEXITY of EXISTENCE, to bring it to some sort of ORDER and PATTERN, enabling the LIFE PROCESS to go forward in the discovery of its POTENTIALITIES within an acceptance of our weakness as individuals. We can learn from the history of the race what human beings have always attempted, and in attempting, have created and left for us as the great heritage of ART and HUMAN THOUGHT. We can see how every culture has grown out of a STRONG COMMUNAL SENSE of HUMAN SIGNIFICANCE, and how each culture has celebrated this significance, and has used ritual and myth, magic and religion, painting and dancing to create vital images and actions of meaning. And we can see how, always, the great common griefs, joys and fear of mankind have been faced and related to human life and meaning by the use of these IMAGES.
The UNIQUENESS of the HUMAN FACULTY lies in the ABILITY to DISCERN, to SERVE, to INTUITE RELATIONSHIPS; RELATIONSHIPS between MAN and MAN, between MAN and NATURE, and between MAN and GOD. According to the profundity of his awareness of this threefold RELATIONSHIP and of his ability to express it in SYMBOLIC terms, so do we see ART and CULTURE of man blossom magnificently into that of fifth-century Greece and thirteenth-century Europe or the other great cultures of mankind.
- Today we are living in a world of CONFUSION and CLAMOUR. The apparent TRIUMPHS of SCIENCE; the diminuition of RELIGIOUS FAITH; the breakdown of communities - have presented us with a situation where, although life in an industrial society is superficially more comfortable - more materially well supplied than at any previous time - in the HEART of LIFE there exists a VACUUM. A sense of UNCERTAINTY about man's place in the world and his future pervades modern thought.
- Through the forms of ART we can RELATE our own PERPLEXITIES and WONDERS to the central themes of the UNCONSCIOUS mind which are expressed in the form of the drama of repentance, sacrifice and redemption. And by so relating, provide a channel for the unruly and capricious influences of the human mind. Without such possibilties of EXPRESSION and CANALIZATION, the human individual and the race remain prey to the COLCANIC ERUPTIONS of the UNCONSCIOUS, which can DESTROY the individual and society. We do not need to doubt this, the evidence of how seemingly civilized human beings can behave when no proper sanctified outlets are provided can be seen described not only in the pages of the works on abnormal psychology, but in the evidence that was presented to a shocked world at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.
- It requires a very unusual MIND to make an analysis of the obvious.
- It is impossible to meditate on Time and the mystery of the creative process of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.
- Not IGNORANCE, but IGNORANCE of IGNORANCE, is the death of KNOWLEDGE.
- Everything of IMPORTANCE has been said BEFRORE by someone who did not DISCOVER it.
- All things in nature are equally INCREDIBLE.
- INTELLECT is to EMOTION as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have CIVILIZED LIFE without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.
- Of course, whatever we can do in the way of ABSTRACTIONS is for some purposes USEFUL - provided that we know what we are about.
- It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. CIVILIZATION advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform WITHOUT thinking about them.
- The greatest INVENTION of the nineteenth century was the INVENTION of the METHOD of INVENTION.
- LEARNING preserves the ERRORS of the past, as well as its WISDOM. For this reason, DICTIONARIES are PUBLIC DANGERS, although they are NECESSITIES.
- Learning is often spoken of as if we were watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read about to the universe.
- In the long run your CHARACTER and your CONDUCT of LIFE depends upon your INTIMATE CONVICTIONS. LIFE is an INTERNAL fact for its own sake, before it is an EXTERNAL fact relating itself to others. The CONDUCT of EXTERNAL LIFE is conditioned by ENVIRONMENT, but it receives its final quality, on which its worth depends, from the INTERNAL LIFE which is the SELF-REALIZATION of EXISTENCE. RELIGION is the art and the theory of the INTERNAL LIFE of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things.
- The distinction between MAN and animal is in one sense only a difference in degree. But the extent of the degree makes all the difference. The Rubicon has been crossed.
- The SCIENCE of PURE MATHEMATICS, in its modern developments, may claim to the most original creation of the human spirit.
- The study of MATHEMATICS is apt to commence in disappointment . . . We are told by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to GRASP it.
- ALGEBRA is the INTELLECTUAL INSTRUMENT for rendering clear the QUANTITATIVE. aspect of the world.
- Human Life is driven forward by its dim APPREHENSION of notions too general for its existing language.
- Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
- There will be some FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch UNCONSCIOUSLY presuppose. Such ASSUMPTIONS appear so obvious that people do not know what they are ASSUMING because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them.
- The total absence of HUMOR from the BIBLE is one of the most singular things in all literature.
- Whenever a BOOK is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be DIFFICULT to TEACH from it. Of course it will be DIFFICULT to TEACH from it. If it were easy, the BOOK ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.
- A great society is a society in which men of BUSINESS think greatly of their functions.
- We built CATHEDRALS in our MIND first before we built them up outside.
- I consider CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY to be one of the great disasters of the human race...... it would be impossible to imagine anything more in-Christian than theology. CHRIST probably couldn't have understood it.
- In FORMAL LOGIC, a CONTRADICTION is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of REAL KNOWLEDGE it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.
- Cosmology ..... restrains the aberrations of the mere UNDISCIPLINED imagination.
- It is the business of the FUTURE to be DANGEROUS.
- EDUCATION with INERT IDEAS is not USELESS; it is, above all things, harmful.
- All the world over and at all times there habe been practical men, absorbed in irreducible and stubborn facts; all the world over and at all times there have been men of PHILOSOPHIC TEMPERAMENT, who have been ABSORBED in the WEAVING of GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
- Whitehead`s God is not omnipotent; He is not the whole of Reality, and His nature never reaches a static completion, but it is always being completed by the creative passage of events: God and the world are, in Whitehead's phrase, instruments of novelty for each other.
- Considering the brain as a HOLOGRAM, we have an answer to Alfred North Whitehead's puzzling statement: 'There is a way in which all things are in all places at the same time.' He has described the way the brain acts as a hologram of an earth which is a HOLOGRAM of larger HOLOGRAMS.
- What is MORALITY in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and IMMORALITY is what they dislike.
- Yet MOTHERS can ponder many things in their hearts which their lips cannot express.
- Nature does NOT come as CLEAN as you can THINK it.
- . . . the theory which I am arguing against is to bifurcate NATURE into two divisions, namely into the NATURE APPREHENDED in AWARENESS and the NATURE which IS the CAUSE of AWARENESS. The nature which is the fact apprehended in awareness holds within it the greenness of the trees, the song of the birds, the warmth of the sun, the hardness of the chairs, and the feel of the velvet. The NATURE which is the cause of awareness is the conjectured system of molecules and electrons which so affects the MIND as to produce the awareness of apparent NATURE. The meeting point of these two NATURES is the mind . . .
- The ORDER OF THE WORLD is no accident. There is nothing actual which could be actual without some measure of ORDER. The RELIGIOUS INSIGHT is the grasp of this truth: That the ORDER OF THE WORLD, THE DEPTH OF REALITY of the world, . . . , THE BEAUTY of the world, the zest of life, and the mastery of evil, are ALL bound together - not accidentally, but by reason of this truth; that the universe exhibits a CREATIVITY with INFINITE FREEDOM, and a realm of forms with INFINITE possibilities: but that this CREATIVITY and these forms are together impotent to achieve actuality apart from the IDEAL HARMONY which is GOD.
- The absolute PACIFIST is a bad citizen; times come when FORCE must be used to uphold RIGHT, JUSTICE and IDEALS.
- The GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS of the PAST were the ADVENTURES of ADVENTURERS of the PAST. Only the ADVENTUROUS can understand the GREATNESS of the PAST.
- . . . the true method of PHILOSOPHICAL CONSTRUCTION is to frame a SCHEME of IDEAS, the best one can, and unflinchingly to explore the interpretation of EXPERIENCE in terms of that scheme . . . all constructive thought, on the various topics of scientific interest, is dominated by some such SCHEME, unacknowledged, but no less influential in guiding the IMAGINATION. The importance of PHILOSOPHY lies in its sustained effort to make such SCHEMES explicit, and thereby capable of criticism and improvement.
- PHILOSOPHY is either SELf-EVIDENT, or it is not PHILOSOPHY.
It is no paradox that in our most THEORETICAL moods we may be nearest to our most PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.
- It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty PROFUNDITY, he is talking NONSENSE.
- The possibilities of MODERN TECHNOLOGY were first in practice realized in England by the energy of a properous middle class. Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realized the method by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached. In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of scholarship during the nineteenth century were the admiration of the world. This discipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure science, and beyond science to general scholarship. It represents the change from AMATEURISH PROFESSIONALS.
- The art of progress is to preserve ORDER amid CHANGE and to preserve CHANGE amid ORDER.
- SCIENTISTS who spend their life with the PURPOSE of proving that it is PURPOSELESS constitute an interesting subject of STUDY.
- . . . RELIGION is the ART and the THEORY of the internal LIFE of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things. This doctrine is the direct negation of the THEORY that RELIGION is primarily a SOCIAL fact. SOCIAL facts are of great importance to RELIGION, because there is no such thing as absolutely independent EXISTENCE. You cannot abstract society from man; most PSYCHOLOGY is HERD-PSYCHOLOGY. But all COLLECTIVE emotions leave untouched the awful ultimate fact, which is the human being, consciously alone with itself, for its own sake.
- RELIGION will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does SCIENCE.
- A RELIGION, on its DOCTRINAL side, can thus be defined as a SYSTEM of general TRUTHS which have the effect of transforming CHARACTER when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended. In the long run your CHARACTER and your CONDUCT OF LIFE depend upon your inimate CONVICTIONS. Life is an internal fact for its own sake before it is an external fact relating itself to others. The CONDUCT OF EXTERNAL LIFE is conditioned by ENVIRONMENT, but it receives its final quality, on which its worth depends, from the internal life which is the SELF-REALIZATION of EXISTENCE. RELIGION is the ART and the THEORY of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things.
- Religion is what the INDIVIDUAL does with his own SOLITARINESS. It runs through three stages, if it evolves to its final satisfaction. It is the transition from GOD THE VOID to GOD THE ENEMY, and from GOD THE ENEMY to GOD THE COMPANION.
Thus RELIGION is SOLITARINESS; and if you are never SOLITARY, you are never RELIGIOUS. COLLECTIVE enthusiasms, revivals, institutions, churches, rituals, bibles, codes of behaviour, are the trappings of RELIGION, its passing forms. They may be useful, or harmful; they may be authoritatively ordained, or merely temporary expedients. But the end of RELIGION is beyond all this.
Accordingly, what should emerge from RELIGION is INDIVIDUAL worth of character. But WORTH is positive or negative, good or bad. RELIGION is by no means necessarily good. It may be very evil. The fact of evil, interwoven with the texture of the world, shows that in the nature of things there remains effectiveness for degradation. In your RELIGIONS experience the God with whom you have made terms may be the God of destruction, the God who leaves in his wake the loss of the greater reality.
- In considering RELIGION, we should not be OBSESSED by the idea of its NECESSARY GOODNESS. This is dangerous DELUSION. The point to notice is its TRANSCENDENT importance; and the fact of this importance is abundantly made evident by the appeal to history.
- RELIGION is the VISION of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives MEANING to all that passes, and yet eludes APPREHENSION; something whose possession is the FINAL GOOD, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ULTIMATE IDEAL, and the hopeless guest.
- The RELIGIOUS VISION and its history of persistent EXPANSION is our one ground of OPTIMISM. Apart from it, HUMAN LIFE is a flash of occasional ENJOYMENTS lighting up a mass of PAIN and MISERY, a bagatelle of TRANSIENT experience.
- A crystal lacks RHYTHM from excess of PATTERN, while a fog is unrhythmic in that it exhibits a patternless confusion of detail.
- No ROMAN lost his life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical diagram.
- SCIENCE REPUDIATES PHILOSOPHY. In other words, it has never cared to justify its TRUTH or explain its MEANING.
- SCIENCE is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely physical nor purely biological. It is becoming the STUDY OF ORGANISMS. Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.
- SCIENCE suggested a cosmology; and whatever suggests a cosmology suggests a RELIGION.
- The aims of SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.
- The aim of SCIENCE is to seek the SIMPLEST EXPLANATION of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are SIMPLE because SIMPLICITY is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be 'SEEK SIMPLICITY and DISTRUST IT.' You cannot have first SPACE and then things to put into it, any more than you can have first a grin and then a Cheshire cat to fit on to it.
- STYLE, in its first sense, is the last acquirement of the EDUCATED MIND.
- Now it cannot be too clearly understood that, in science, TECHNICAL TERMS are names ARBITRARILY assigned, like Christian names to children. There may be JUDICIOUS or INJUDICIOUS . . . . the essential principle involved was quite clearly enunciated in Wonderland to Alice by Humpty Dumpty, when he told her, apropos of his use of words, 'I pay them extra and make them mean what I like'.
- We THINK in GENERALITIES, we LIVE in DETAIL.
- Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
- Among the men and women the MULTITUDE, I perceive one picking me out by SECRET and DIVINE SIGNS, Ackowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am, Some are baffled, but that one is not - that one knows me. Ah lover and perfect equal, I meant that you should discover me so by FAINT INDIRECTIONS, And I when I meet you to discover you by the like in you. Among the Multitude
- On the BEACH at NIGHT ALONE, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright STARS shining, I think a thought of the CLEF of the UNIVERSES and of the FUTURE A vast SIMILITUDE interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities, that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This VAST SIMILITUDE spans them, and always has spann'd, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. On the Beach at Night Alone.
- I CONTRADICT MYSELF? Very well, I CONTRADICT MYSELF. I am LARGE; I contain MULTITUDES.
- You whoever you are! You. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EACH OF US inevitable, Each of us limitless - Each of us with his or her RIGHT upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as DIVINELY as any is here."
- To me every hour of the light and dark is a MIRACLE. Every cubic inch of space is a MIRACLE.
- All MUSIC is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments, It is not the violin and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's chorus. It is nearer and farther than they.
- The ORCHESTRA whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ARDORS from me I did not know I possess;d them.
- This moment YEARNING and THOUGHTFUL sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands YEARNING and THOUGHTFUL, It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Of far, far away, in China, or in Russia or Japan, talking other dialects as I do to men in my own lands, Or I know we should be BRETHREN and LOVERS, I know I should be HAPPY with them.
- O YOU whom I often and silently come where YOU are that I may be with YOU, As I walk by YOUR side or sit near, or remain in the same room with YOU, Little YOU know the SUBTLE ELECTRIC FIRE that for YOUR sake is playing within me.
- . . . According to this [Plato's] view, TIME and the UNIVERSE are INSEPARABLE. TIME, unlike SPACE, is not regarded as a PRE-EXISTING framework into which the UNIVERSE is fitted, but is itself produced by the UNIVERSE, being an essential feature of its RATIONAL STRUCTURE. Unlike the ideal MODEL ('ETERNITY') on which it is based, the UNIVERSE is subject to CHANGE. TIME, however, is that aspect of CHANGE which bridges the gap between the UNIVERSE and its MODEL, for being governed by a REGULAR numerical sequence it is a 'MOVING IMAGE of ETERNITY'. This MOVING IMAGE manifests itself in the MOTIONS of the heavenly bodies. It came into existence simultaneously with the construction of the heavens, and if the heavens should ever be dissolved then TIME would pass away too. Thus, a further analogy of the MOVING IMAGE to the ETERNAL is that the created heavens has been, are, and will be in all TIME. As C.D.BROAD (1021,p343) has pointed out, this view is similar to that held by SPINOZA who believed that things as they reallyare fpr 'REASON' are TIMELESS, but this TIMELESSNESS cannot be grasped by 'IMAGINATION' which represents it confusedly as duration through ENDLESS TIME.
- Despite the many attempts to dissociate the CONCEPT of TIME from that of the UNIVERSE, it has long been assumed that these two CONCEPTS stand in a peculiarly intimate relation to each other, irrespective of whether or not there is a unique NATURAL ORIGIN of TIME.
- Our 'SENSE' of TIME is neither a NECESSARY condition of our EXPERIENCE, as Kant thought, nor a simple SENSATION, as Mach believed, but an INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCTION. It depends on processes of MENTAL ORGANIZATON UNITING THOUGHT and ACTION. It is a late product of human
evolution, in all probability closely related to the development of LANGUAGE.
And indeed studies have shown that the gradual acquirement of particular temporal coneptions can be closely correlated with the child's acquisition and use of language.
- At this point it may be observed that there is a notable difference between THEORETICAL PHYSICS on the one hand, and PURE MATHEMATICS and EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS on the other, in respect of the enduring validity of the advances that are made. A theorem of PURE MATHEMATICS, once discovered, is true for ever: all the PURE MATHEMATICS that Archimedes knew more than 2000 years ago is taught without essential change to our students today. And the results of EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS, so far as they are simply the expression inmathematical language of the unchangeable brute facts of experience, have the same character of permanence. The situation is different with an INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE such as THEORETICAL PHYSICS: it is built round CONCEPTIONS, and the progress of the subject consists very largely in replacing these CONCEPTIONS by other CONCEPTIONS which transcend, or even contradict, them. At the beginning of the century the two theories which seemed most firmly established were that which represented gravitation in terms of action at a distance, and that which represented light as a motion of waves: and we have seen the one in a certain sense supplanted by GENERAL RELATIVITY and the other trying to make the best of an uneasy conjunction with quantum mechanics. The FAME of a THEORETICAL PHYSICIST rests on the part that his IDEAS have played in the history of science: it does not necessarily detract from his importance if none of them SURVIVE into thew physics of his remote successors.
- . . . The universe KNOWN to us, far from being put on the same level of permanence as God, cannot be regarded as more than one of His dispensations: perhaps not the only one.
When the relation of the material universe to God is conceived in this way, it is natural to inquire whether there is in it some MEANING for us, which we may hope to understand. A partial answer to this question may be found, I think, when we fix our attention on the ORDER that has been discerned in the cosmos by narural philosophers. The fact that changes in our material universe can be PREDICTED - that they are subject to MATHEMATICAL LAW - is the most significant thing about it, for MATHEMATICAL LAW is a concept of the mind, and from the existence pf MATHEMATICAL LAW we infer that our minds have access to something akin to themselves that is in or behind the universe. And the MATHEMATICAL LAWS were not brought into existence at the time when they were discovered: men lived in the midst of all the POTENTIALITIES for countless generations, unable to use them for want of knowledge. The laws of electricity were as true in the age of palaeolithic man as they are today. The natives whom Darwin found at Tierra del Fuego eating raw shellfish off the rocks might have been supported against the rigours pf th climate in electrically-heated dressing-gowns if they had known more about the LAWS that were already in existence. When even we KNOW now is only a small part of the whole that is to be DISCOVERED.
- TRUE KNOWLEDGE can only be acquired PIECEMEAL, by the PATIENT interrogation of NATURE.
- I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by any author which, starting from philosophical or theological premises likely to meet with general acceptance, reached the conclusions that a praiseworthy ordering of one's LIFE is to DEVOTE it to RESEARCH in MATHEMATICS.
- In the LAWS of NATURE, known and unknown, we recognise a system of TRUTH, which has been revealed to us by the study of NATURE, but which is unlike material NATURE in its purely intellectual and universal character, and which, if the conclusions we have reached are correct, is TIMELESS, in contrast to the TRANSITORY universe of matter. Material NATURE has made manifest to our UNDERSTANDING REALITIES greater than itself, REALITIES which point to a GOD who is not bound up with the world, who is transcendent and subject to no limitation. The principle, that matter exists not for its own sake, amy be expressed in theological language by saying that NATURE has a sacramental quality: a principle that has long been recognised in religion, and can now be admitted to be not alien to the philosophy of SCIENCE.
- The conception of a RULE of LAW, in itself TIMELESS, which is INTELLIGIBLE to our minds and which governs all the happenings of the material world, is the SPIRITUAL aspect of PHYSICAL SCIENCE. We stand in awe before the thought that the INTELLECTUAL FRAMEWORK of NATURE is PRIOR to NATURE HERSELF - that it existed before the material universe began its history - that the cosmos revealed to us by science is ONLY ONE FRAGMENT in the PLAN of the ETERNAL.
- What even we KNOW is only a small part of the whole that is to be discovered.
- The DISCIPLINE of the SCHOLAR is a CONSECRATION of the PURSUIT of the TRUTH. It involves a willingness to undergo such real SACRIFICES as are demanded by this CONSECRATION, whether they are sacrifices of money or sacrifices of prestige, or even in the extreme (but not unprecedented)
case, of personal safety. However, the main part of this discipline is intrinsic and belongs to one's relation to SCIENCE itself rather than to one's reaction to the external environment within which SCIENCE is carried on.
In the first place, discipline does not include the making of errors. What it does preclude is the retention of an error which has clearly and distinctly betrayed its wrongness. If a theorem is inconsistent, or if a proof refuses to become complete under the greatest pressure which you can exert, cast it from you.
This is the negative side of INTELLECTUAL discipline. There is, however, a positive correlate to this. If a theorem merely looks grotesque or unusual and if your maximum effort cannot discover any contradiction, do not cast it aside. If the only thing that seems to be wrong about a proof is its UNCONVENTIONALITY, then dare to accept it, UNCONVENTIONALITY and all. Have the courage of your beliefs - because if you don't you will find that the best things you might have thought about will be picked up from under your own nose by more venturesome spirits; but, above all, because this is the only manly thing to do.
- MATHEMATICS is very largely a YOUNG MAN`S GAME. It is the ATHLETICISM of the INTELLECT, making demands which can be satisfied to the full only when there is YOUTH and STRENGTH. After one or two promising papers, many young mathematicians who have shown signs of ability sink into that very same limbo which surrounds YESTERDAY'S SPORTS HEROES. Yet it is not bearable to contemplate a brief distinction and burgeoning of activity which is to be followed by a LIFETIME of BOREDOM. If the career of a MATHEMATICIAN is to be anything but an ANTI-CLIMATIC one, he must devote his brief springtime of top CREATIVE ACTIVITY to the discovery of new fields and new problems of such RICHNESS and COMPELLING CHARACTER that he can scarcely exhaust them in his lifetime. It has been my good fortune that the probles which excited me as a youth, and which I did a considerable amount to initiate, still do not seem to have lost their power to take maximum demands on me in my sixtieth year.
- The experience of the scientists who have worked on the atomic bomb has indicated that in any investigation of this kind the scientist ends by PUTTING UNLIMITED POWERS in the HAND of the PEOPLE whom he is LEAST INCLINED to TRUST with their USE. It is perfectly clear also that to
DISSEMINATE INFORMATION about a WEAPON in the PRESENT STATE of our CIVILIZATION is to make it practically certain that the WEAPON will be USED.
If therefore I do not desire to PARTICIPATE in the BOMBING or POISONING of DEFENCELESS PEOPLE - and I most certainly do NOT - I MUST TAKE a SERIOUS RESPONSIBILITY as to those to whom I disclose my SCIENTIFIC IDEAS.
I do not expect to publish any future work of mine which may damage in the hands of irresponsible militarists.
- It was not possible to formulate the laws of QUANTUM MECHANICS in a fully consistent way without reference to CONSCIOUSNESS.
- The present laws of physics are at least INCOMPLETE without a translation into terms of mental phenomena. More likely, they are INACCURATE, the INACCURACY increasing with the role that LIFE plays in the phenomena considered . . . As we consider situations in which CONSCIOUSNESS is more and more relevant, the necessity for modifications of the regularities obtained for inanimate objects will be more and more apparent.
- . . . The PROMISE of FUTURE SCIENCE is to furnish a UNIFYING GOAL to mankind rather than merely the MEANS to an EASY LIFE, to provide SOME of what the HUMAN SOUL needs in addition to bread alone. If it can fulfill this function, it will play one of the great roles in the drama of mankind.
- The DANGER with which the GROWTH and INCREASED SIGNIFICANCE of SCIENCE may confront society stems from the INCREASE in POWER and CAPABILITIES which results from INCREASED knowledge and which necessitates new restraints. The growth of SCIENCE will cause a dilemma also for SCIENCE itself. The WELTBILD it will generate when it is extended to more and more areas MAY OUTGROW the CAPACITY of any SINGLE MIND. This may result in the FRAGMENTATION of SCIENCE or in a superstructure of organization. The organization of SCIENCE could destroy the detachment and sublime satisfaction which is the reward of the SCIENTIST of our period and which keeps him from COVETING POWER and UNDUE INFLUENCE. It will be easier to avoid the DANGERS posed by the growth of SCIENCE if we do not try to forget them; its promise is more likely to be fulfilled if we keep it in mind.
- ETHICS, like natural selection, make existence possible. AESTHETICS, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change.
- GENIUS lasts longer than BEAUTY. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to OVEREDUCATE ourselves. The Picture of Dorian Gray 1891
- EDUCATION is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that NOTHING that is worth knowing can be TAUGHT.
- Always FORGIVE your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
It is absurd to divide people into GOOD and BAD, People are either CHARMING or TEDIOUS.
- It is better to be BEAUTIFUL than GOOD, but it is better to be GOOD than UGLY.
- Man can believe the IMPOSSIBLE, but man can NEVER believe the IMPROBABLE.
- To LIVE is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, and that is all.
- The only people who THINK ABOUT MONEY as much as the RICH are the POOR.
- trouble with PROGRESS is that it goes forward not backward.
- The fact is, that CIVILIZATION requires SLAVES. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are SLAVES to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, CULTURE and CONTEMPLATION become almost impossible. HUMAN SLAVERY is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical SLAVERY, on the slavery of the MACHINE, the future of the world depends.
- Anyone can SYMPATHISE with the suffering of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
- The trouble with PROGRESS is that it goes forward not backward.
Believe in yourself but don't be overconfident; Be satisfied but know that you can always improve. Accept LOVE graciously.
If a man DIE it is because DEATH has first POSSESSED his IMAGINATION.
These bickerings between two cultures do not deserve a great deal of attention; they are too often a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. . . .
You forgot the one thing
missing from your act:
Backstage you left your TRICK TOP HAT.
- Government is an agency not of law and order, but of law and disorder.
- The original John Brown has been a fervent IDEALIST, which was why P.O.E. [Purity of Essence] admired him. They were all fervent IDEALISTS, too.
John Brown, motivated by IDEALISM, has set out to abolish slavery in UNISTAT in the nineteenth century. On one of his first raids he murdered a whole family of slave-owners. An associate, who was less idealistic, had suggested sparing the children, but John Brown refused: 'NITS grow up to be LICE', he said.
IDEALISTS were like that. You were much safer falling into the hands of the CYNICS. The CYNICS regarded everybody as equally CORRUPT. That was the attitude, for instance, of Tobias Knight and the other old hands at the FBI.
The IDEALISTS REGARDED EVERYBODY as EQUALLY CORRUPT,EXCEPT THEMSELVES.
- NIHILISM had been invented in RUSSIA in the nineteenth century. It was a PHILOSOPHY based on materialism, skepticism and a fierce demand for social justice. Naturally, various deranged individuals quickly made it an excuse for violence, and NIHILISM became a synonym for horror.
ANARCHISM was similar. It had been invented in FRANCE in the nineteenth century and was also based on materialism, skepticism and a fierce demand for social justice. It attracted the same types as NIHILISM and also quickly acquired a bad reputation.
The NIHILIST ANARCHIST HORDE believed that they had chosen that name to refurbish the sane, sound side of NIHILISM and ANARCHISM. Actually, they were kidding themselves. They really enjoyed having the name that scared the bejesus out of everybody.
- Every DOMESTICATED TERRAN PRIMATE was a WALKING ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM.
The primate nervous sytem contained the whole of evolution.
The BIO-SURVIVALCIRCUIT, imprinted in the ORAL-SUCKLING stage, was chemically bonded onto the autonomic nervous system and brainstem. It existed in null-class neurological time; that is, it acted without any conscious decision-making process, so no TIME was experienced when it operated. 'I just found myself doing it', said the baffled primate as he was being decorated for bravery or court-martialed for cowardice.
The EMOTIONAL CIRCUIT, imprinted in the anal-territorial toddling stage, was chemically bounded into the thalanus. It existed in medium-fast neurological time; that is, primates often reacted mechanically to emotional stimuli but sometimes agonized over emotional decisions, becoming acutely aware of TIME as they hesitated.
The SEMANTIC CIRCUIT, imprinted by hominid speech-forms and artifacts, was chemically bonded into the left hemisphere of the cortex. It existed in medium neurological time; primates were always conscious of themselves thinking as they juggled their verbal categories around.
The SOCIO-SEXUAL CIRCUIT, imprinted by the first mating or orgasm experiences, was chemically bonded into the left neo-cortex. It existed in medium-slow neurological time and caused the primates to plan for the future, to think of old age and death and to have hopes for their children.
- The NEURO-SOMATIC CIRCUIT, imprinted by extraplanetary travel (zero-gravity) or neurotransmitter chemicals, was chemically bonded into the right neo-cortex. It existed in very-slow neurological time and gave the primates who had developed it a hedonic, laid-back attitude - a BRAIN HIGH.
The META-PROGRAMMING CIRCUIT, imprinted by disciplined training in neuro-science, was chemically bonded into the frontal lobes. It existed beyond time, giving the primates who had it multiple-choice view of reality and allowing them to understand QUANTUM PHYSICS and the LAWS of MAGICK.
- The HEDONIC NEURO-SOMATIC CIRCUIT and the RELATIVISTIC METAPROGRAMMING CIRCUIT must have some evolutionary function. I assume they are preparing us for POST-TERRESTRIAL MIGRATION.
- I have always been among those that believed that the GREATEST FREEDOM OF SPEECH was the GREATEST SAFETY, because if a man is a FOOL the best thing is to encourage him to ADVERTISE the fact by SPEAKING.
- The business of GOVERNMENT is to organize the COMMON INTEREST against the SPECIAL INTERESTS.
- TOLERANCE is an ADMIRABLE INTELLECTUAL GIFT; but it is worth little in POLITICS. Politics is a WAR of CAUSES, a JOUST of PRINCIPLES.
- At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called LAWS of NATURE are the explanations of natural phenomena
- The totality of REALITY is the world. We make ourselves PICTURES of the FACTS. The PICTURE is a MODEL of REALITY. The LOGICAL PICTURE of the FACTS is the THOUGHT. 'A state of affairs is THINKABLE ' means! We can PICTURE it for ourselves. The TOTALITY of true THOUGHTS is a PICTURE of the world.
- We find certain things about SEEING puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of SEEING puzzling enough.
- What SIGNS FAIL to EXPRESS, their APPLICATION shows.
- A SYSTEM is, so to speak, a WORLD. In MATHEMATICS we cannot talk of SYSTEMS in general, but only within SYSTEMS. They are just what we cannot talk about.
Woolf, Virginia
Masterpieces are not SINGLE and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the BODY of the PEOPLE, so that the experience of the MASS is behind the SINGLE voice.- Thanks to the HUMAN HEART by which we live, Thanks to its TENDERNESS, its JOYS and FEARS, To me the meanest flower that blows can give THOUGHTS that do OFTEN lie too DEEP for TEARS.
- All things shall LIVE in us and we shall LIVE in all THINGS that SURROUND us. This I deem Our tendency, and thus shall every day Enlarge our sphere of pleasure and of pain.
- And now I see with EYE serene The very Pulse of the MACHINE.
- There was a TIME when MEADOW, GROVE, and STREAM, The EARTH, and every common sight, To me did seem APPARELLED in CELESTIAL LIGHT, The GLORY and the FRESHNESS of a DREAM. It is not now as it hath been for yore; Turn where so e'er I may, By night or day, The THINGS which I have SEEN I now can SEE NO MORE.
- Where the statue stood Of NEWTON with his PRISM and SILENT FACE, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
- POETRY is the SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW of POWERFUL FEELINGS: it takes its ORIGIN from EMOTION RECOLLECTED in TRANQUILLITY.
- POETRY is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours of MEN of SCIENCE should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect in our condition and in the
impressions which we habitually receive, the POET will sleep then no more that at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the MAN of SCIENCE. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, the mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed.
- And I have FELT A PRESENCE that disturbs me wit the JOY Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something for more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
- My heart leaps up when I behold A RAINBOW in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The CHILD is FATHER of the MAN; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by NATURAL PIETY.
- Thou dost preserve the STARS from wrong; And the most ancient HEAVENS though they are fresh and strong.
- WISDOM is oft times nearer when we STOOP Than when we SOAR.
- The WORLD is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: LITTLE we SEE in NATURE that is OURS; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for every thing, WE ARE OUT OF TIME; It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
- Every great and original WRITER in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.