Art and Science

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
~ Isaac Asimov

Liberty

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

— John Adams

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

— David Hume

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."

— John F. Kennedy

What is knowledge?

Information is not knowledge.

~ Albert Einstein

More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.

~ Daniel J. Boorstin

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

~ Niels Bohr

Is God 'there' to help us?

Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices—saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side.

- Abraham Lincoln

Beware being right with a passion...

In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.

— Publilius Syrus

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

— William Penn

Metaphors

"Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible."

— Johan Huizinga

"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

— G.C. Lichtenberg

Philosophies for getting better

Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion and the determination to keep going anyway.

-- Nick Gleason

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

-- Winston Churchill

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing is to supply light and not heat.

— Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)

Successful technologies

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

~ Isaac Asimov

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

~ Richard P. Feynman

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

~ Francis Bacon

the whole of creation, and truth

Know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful...
... the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.

~ Robinson Jeffers

Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of spreading even against it.

~ Paramahansa Yogananda

knowledge, wisdom, and rights

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

~ Jimmy Wales

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

~ John C. Maxwell

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

~ Alexander Hamilton

We bring small daily blessings

"Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage."

~ Albert Schweitzer

What happens if I say this is a quote for all of us?

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

- Christopher Morley

Dream of the Power of Love

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

~ Edgar Allan Poe

"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

What goals should we pursue?

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

- Mitch Hedberg

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

~ Walter M. Miller, Jr.

An Insider's View of War

"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end."

~ Douglas MacArthur

Civilization as an excuse for incivility

"If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later."

~ Lewis Carroll

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

~ Robert E. Howard

Lie awake?

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

~Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in "Peanuts" US cartoonist (1922 - 2000)

writers vs. authors

"Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

~ Colette

Risk vs Fear

If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed.
~ Charles Lindbergh

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
~ Thomas Edison

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

What leads us / what makes a dark age

"What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us—what convictions, what
courage, what faith—win or lose."

~ Adlai Stevenson

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."

-- James A. Michener