Exercise Quotes - page 61

When he discovered the polyhedral hypothesis soon after being sent to teach mathematics in Graz, he changed his mind [about becoming a Lutheran minister], indicating... that he now saw his work in astronomy as an exercise of a priestly vocation. ...he claimed that, in the Harmonice mundi, he offered to the world nothing less than the plan of creation, which God himself had waited six thousand years for someone to comprehend. (Johannes Kepler)
Noam Chomsky's pessimism, "neither history nor psychology nor sociology gives us any particular reason to look forward with hope to the rule of the new mandarins," may be excessive; there are as yet no historical precedents, and the scientists and intellectuals who, with such deplorable regularity, have been found willing to serve every government that happened to be in power, have been no "meritocrats" but, rather, social climbers. But Chomsky is entirely right in raising the question: "Quite generally, what grounds are there for supposing that those whose claim to power is based on knowledge and technique will be more benign in their exercise of power than those whose claim is based on wealth or aristocratic origin?" (Op. cit., p. 27.)
Noam Chomsky
Descartes ... complained that Greek geometry was so much tied to figures "that is can exercise the understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the imagination." Descartes also deplored that the methods of Euclidean geometry were exceedingly diverse and specialized and did not allow for general applicability. Each theorem required a new kind of proof... What impressed Descartes especially was that algebra enables man to reason efficiently. It mechanizes thought, and hence produces almost automatically results that may otherwise be difficult to establish. ...historically it was Descartes who clearly perceived and called attention to this feature. Whereas geometry contained the truth about the universe, algebra offered the science of method. It is ... paradoxical that great thinkers should be enamored with ideas that mechanize thought. Of course, their goal is to get at more difficult problems, as indeed they do.
René Descartes
However, the fact that Mushrif has to apologise for giving his community good news from Gujarat, gives us an idea of the kind of intellectual terror Congress and its "secular” allies have come to exercise among Muslims. They must appear as permanent victims in the Congress scheme of things or else be declared traitors as happened with Salman Khan, who dared speak a few mild words in favour of Modi's regime or, worse still, be bulldozed into silence as happened with Maulana Vastanvi.
Salman Khan
Today is a time of much historical revisionism. We look for sins in the lives of saints. I understand this tendency-greatness doesn't excuse evil. To worship another human is to forget who a human being is in the first place. But the truth goes both ways. What about finding the good in disgraced figures? What moral lessons might we gleam from such an exercise? I am not talking about dictators, or mass murderers, or perverse evildoers. I am talking about Richard Nixon. I am talking about our presidents, our parents, our favorite characters, our friends, our artists, and our acquaintances. People who make great mistakes but also do great good. People who say prejudiced things and then do justice. People who are human. What are we to make of such people? Richard Nixon, by many accounts, was a mean man. But there was good in him. More importantly, there was good he did. And that's worth remembering.
Richard Nixon
Operation Dark Winter employed a cast of volunteers... to act out roles following a script in which a terrorist released smallpox in one eastern U.S. city. The result was sobering to an extreme. The public health system virtually collapsed. Hospitals degenerated into chaos. Smallpox spread to twenty-five states and overseas. The national stockpile of vaccines proved to be deeply inadequate. The exercise was called off after four days from the sheer exhaustion of the participants, while the fictional epidemic was still spreading.
James Howard Kunstler
Conflict among nations will trouble this planet and will test our patience for a long time to come. And as long as weapons are necessary, wisdom in their control is going to be needed. The man who guides them holds in his hands the hopes of survival for the entire world. As I exercise my cares every day and every night, I often think of those who have just begun and those who are yet unborn. I want them to have a chance. With all my power, and all the aid the good Lord offers me, I will help give them that chance. And I think so will all of you.
Lyndon B. Johnson
In our system, the first right and most vital of all our rights is the right to vote. Jefferson described the elective franchise as "the ark of our safety." It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad.
Lyndon B. Johnson
But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics.
John F. Kennedy
Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.
Honoré de Balzac