Search Quotes - page 50
Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth. Medicine also disregards national boundaries. And literature frequently rises to heights that make it international.
The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth. His attitude is objective rather than subjective. In his work he finds great satisfaction in discovering new facts or new relationships between known facts, but even greater pleasure is derived from seeing his results incorporated into the body of scientific knowledge and from seeing them willingly used by others in the further development of science.
Irving Langmuir
What should thoughtful people do? Are there means to brighten future prospects in the face of such human myopia and stubbornness?
There are many in the scientific community whose views are bleak. One biologist, speaking to me many years ago, remarked that many of his colleagues thought of the behavior of the human race as similar to a one-celled animal's. Such an animal may extend a pseudopod in search of food; if hurt or blocked, it pulls back, but otherwise its activity continues, mindlessly, without understanding, without end. With larger perils unperceived, it can destroy itself.
Henry Way Kendall
Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
E. O. Wilson
In closing, I can only apologize for not having given any positive account of either mathematical truth or mathematical necessity. I can only say that I have not given such an account because I think that the search for such an account is a fundamental mistake. It is not that there is nothing special about mathematics; it is that, in my opinion, the investigation of mathematics must presuppose and not seek to account for the truth of mathematics. But this is the beginning of another paper and not the end of this one.
Hilary Putnam
(Women's Liberation) ... is an ontological, spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society and sparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becoming of women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to do with the search for ultimate meaning and reality which some would call God.
Mary Daly
Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, "Are you Osman Atto?" And he said "Yes." And I said, "Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God."
William G. Boykin
The Baltic republics, because of their history and other characteristics, could enjoy special status in the Union. However, the 'sovereignization' of Russia scuttled the search for a new formula for relations with the Baltic republics in a reformed Union. It caused a chain reaction, during which analogous enactments were passed by all of the Union republics and later autonomous republics. A 'parade of sovereignties' had begun. The only means of preventing the collapse of the Union was the preparation without delay of a new Union Treaty.
Mikhail Gorbachev
"He was a fool,” said Willow calmly to Klein. "There are many who refuse their responsibilities. Fooling themselves they search for a ‘higher ideal'. He was a fool.”
"What are responsibilities?” said Klein laconically. "He knows. Responsibility, my dear, is another word for self-interest. For survival.”
She looked at Klein uncomprehendingly.
Michael Moorcock
The politicians to a man agree, that it is free from particular reflections, but that the satire on general societies of men is too severe. Not but we now and then meet with people of greater perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to give light into Gulliver's design. Lord -- is the person who least approves it, blaming it as a design of evil consequence to depreciate human nature . The duchess dowager of Marlborough is in raptures at it; she says she can dream of nothing else since she read it: she declares, that she has now found out, that her whole life has been lost in caressing the worst part of mankind, and treating the best as her foes: and that if she knew Gulliver, though he had been the worst enemy she ever had; she should give up her present acquaintance for his friendship.
John Gay
The search for subversives results in the intimidation of the independent, the original, the imaginative, and the experimental-minded... It discourages the discussion of controversial matters in the classroom, for such discussion may be reported, or misreported, and cause trouble.
Henry Steele Commager
Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden year ... give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.
John Muir
It is probably a good idea to search, at some level, for asteroids that come to the Earth's general vicinity. But merely counting the asteroids found is not sufficient. It is desirable to follow up each discovery to examine whether it can or can not be a threat during the next century or so. Objects for which the threat cannot be eliminated should be singled out for special study, notably to the extent of searching for old images in photographic archives. 1997 XF11 was noteworthy for the apathy shown to it prior to the very widespead announcement in March. If proper attention had been given to it earlier, the circumstances that led to the announcement would never have occurred. Sometimes statistics will conspire to draw attention to a problem. Maybe they are trying to tell us something.
Brian G. Marsden
The state - or, to make the matter more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken
The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes.
"Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!"
Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away.
William Golding
I must intreat your patience - your gentle hearing. I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine; enquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the ground of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you...
But your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry - tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed, you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it.
Frances Wright
Ought I to say that the form of change is fixity, or more precisely, that change is an endless search for fixity? A nostalgia for inertia: indolence and its frozen paradises. Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary. It is transition. But the moment I say transition, the spell is broken. Transition is not wisdom, but a simple going toward... Transition vanishes: only thus is it transition.
Octavio Paz
When the pioneers and adventurers of our past left their homes in search of new lands, they said good-bye forever to the place of their birth and the companions of their youth. Only a lifetime ago, parents waved farewell to their emigrating children in the virtual certainty that they would never meet again.
And now, within one incredible generation, all this has changed.
Arthur C. Clarke
