Impact Quotes - page 38
In mechanics Descartes can hardly be said to have advanced beyond Galileo. ...His statement of the first and second laws of motion was an improvement in form, but his third law is false in substance. The motions of bodies in their direct impact was imperfectly understood by Galileo, erroneously given by Descartes, and first correctly stated by Wren, Wallis, and Huygens.
René Descartes
The Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing is named for Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002), a pioneer in the area of distributed computing. His foundational work on concurrency primitives (such as the semaphore), concurrency problems (such as mutual exclusion and deadlock), reasoning about concurrent systems, and self-stabilization comprises one of the most important supports upon which the field of distributed computing is built. No other individual has had a larger influence on research in principles of distributed computing. The prize is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing have been evident for at least a decade.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Though the situation has somewhat improved in recent years, our education system does not even come close to adequately reflecting the impact of these movements of ordinary people on our history. One major contribution was Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and the companion Voices volume, which lifted the veil from central parts of history that had been concealed or sidelined in the standard patriotic versions. But there is a long way to go. In particular, labor history is virtually effaced in the press and the educational system, as well as in the media. Not long ago fine journalists covering the labor movement. Today, almost none. Every newspaper has a business section; none could even imagine a labor section, addressing the interests and concerns of a large majority of the population. Social movements receive cursory attention, usually highly misleading.
Noam Chomsky
One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed. I often think today of what an impact could be made if children believed they were contributing to a family's essential survival and happiness. In the transformation from a rural to an urban society, children are - though they might not agree - robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
A complete destruction of cities, industry, transport, and systems of education, a poisoning of fields, water, and air by radioactivity, a physical destruction of the larger part of mankind, poverty, barbarism, a return to savagery, and a genetic degeneracy of the survivors under the impact of radiation, a destruction of the material and information basis of civilization - this is a measure of the peril that threatens the world as a result of the estrangement of the world's two super-powers.
Every rational creature, finding itself on the brink of a disaster, first tries to get away from the brink and only then does it think about the satisfaction of its other needs. If mankind is to get away from the brink, it must overcome its divisions.
Andrei Sakharov
