Contact Quotes - page 33
Is science really gaining in its assault on the totality of the unsolved? As science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it also learns several new questions. It is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance, making an ever larger circular clearing within which, not to insist on the pun, things are clear... But as that circle becomes larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer. Science learns more and more. But there is an ultimate sense in which it does not gain; for the volume of the appreciated but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
Warren Weaver
The climate of his mind is so salubrious, so invigorating, that dull thoughts and heavy cares are dispelled by contact with it.
And is not this the true end of scholarship? It is to make us wise, of course, but what is the use of being wise if we are not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more kinship with that than the pinched, frightened fun of those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor simple, bound nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior.
Robertson Davies
As a guide to engineering ethics, I should like to commend to you a liberal adaptation of the injunction contained in the oath of Hippocrates that the professional man do nothing that will harm his client. Since engineering is a profession which affects the material basis of everyone's life, there is almost always an unconsulted third party involved in any contact between the engineer and those who employ him - and that is the country, the people as a whole. These, too, are the engineer's clients, albeit involuntarily. Engineering ethics ought therefore to safeguard their interests most carefully. Knowing more about the public effects his work will have, the engineer ought to consider himself an "officer of the court” and keep the general interest always in mind.
Hyman G. Rickover
Until a man's earthly life finishes its course, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness continues within him. However, high a spiritual and moral state one might achieve, a gradual or even headlong and deep fall into the abyss of sin is always possible. Therefore, communion of the holy Body and Blood of Christ, which strengthens our contact with Him and refreshes us with the living streams of the grace of the Holy Spirit flowing through the Body of the Church, is necessary for everyone.
John of Shanghai and San Francisco
Every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the culture of peoples of distant lands or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. We continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilised life remain unawakened.
It is not to be denied that, in the natural sciences, this kind of interest is wanting. Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.
Hermann von Helmholtz
He violates many of the tested rules of hitting; by that, I mean he goes against what the greats of hitting like Ty Cobb and Ted Williams have said about hitting. He steps in the bucket but his hands are still there, ready to get the bat around on any pitch. He makes contact. He can wait on the ball and hit it down the first base line harder than most left-handers.
Roberto Clemente
He always kept a jar of honey in his locker. My son Blake, when having a chance to come into the clubhouse, always ran for Roberto, sitting on his knee – the two of them eating honey. Watching him hit – sometimes with both feet off the ground at contact – and having the best throwing arm in baseball are things I will remember. I also saw him hit a long home run over the scoreboard at Wrigley Field. I miss him. He was kind to all players; you didn't have to be a star.
Roberto Clemente
Contact is possible throughout cosmos through the common denominator of mind, if the consciousness is high enough. But of course, it is only the very highest Beings Who have this cosmic consciousness (Telepathy is a fact, an inborn fact in nature, a natural part of man's being.) Evil on other planets exists, but it is contained in a way that evil on this planet is not so easily contained... we are protected; it is all under law.
Benjamin Creme
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left open to the consideration of my readers.
Isaac Newton
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
Lyndon B. Johnson
