Assign Quotes - page 3
For me, Deism doesn't work because I find I can only think of a creator in human terms, and the concept of a human-like creator of muons and neutrinos has no meaning for me. But more profoundly, Deism spoils my covenant with Mystery. To assign attributes to Mystery is to disenchant it, to take away its luminance. I think of the ancients ascribing thunder and lightning to godly feuds, and I smile. The need for explanation pulsates in us all.
Ursula Goodenough
There has never been just one best way to teach quantum mechanics. My goal is neither to sow nostalgia for the philosophically engaged style of Oppenheimer and Nordheim, nor to condemn the pragmatic approach of Fermi, Bethe and Feynman. It is rather to highlight the choices that physicists must always make when stepping into the classroom. Choices of topics to discuss and problems to assign reflect deeper decisions about the ideal type of physicist one seeks to train. Should the new generation be philosophically attuned, concerned with minute details of conceptual interpretation? Or should physicists hone their ability to calculate, pushing Heisenberg's and Schrödinger's equations into the service of ever more elaborate problems to solve and phenomena to analyse? Competing ideals have flourished under different pedagogical conditions.
David Kaiser
Opposing the policies of the American state is not synonymous with opposing 'America.' It is possible to disavow every single action taken by the U. S. government and still love the 'little platoons' of America, as Edmund Burke described a man's social mainstay-his family, friends, coreligionists, coworkers. By logical extension, it is dishonest to malign those who assign the 'bad' category to the state, on the ground that they hate 'America.
Ilana Mercer
To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.
Gustav Radbruch
To seek after any shape of God, and to assign a form and image to Him, is a proof of man's folly. For God, whosoever he be (if haply there be any other but the world itself), and in what part soever resident, all sense He is, all sight, all hearing: He is the whole of the life and of the soul, all of Himself.
Pliny the Elder
The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
X Y
We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y for bows; then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for [...] North Korea, and Y for South Korea. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please. Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. [...] This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process.
S. I. Hayakawa
I will tell you something I know. Frozen embryos? Guess what?! THEY'RE NOT ALIVE! AT ALL! They're frozen! They're frozen! They're frozen! They're frozen! They're frozen! They are frozen! They're frozen! It's not a question! It's not up for fucking discussion! Don't allow that fucking idiot in the White House to say, "Whoa, no, they're...." THEY'RE NOT ALIVE, ASSHOLE! You can defrost one, like a mini-pizza - IT'S STILL NOT ALIVE! It has the potential for life, that's what it has! But otherwise, it's a mini-pizza! If frozen embryos are alive, we should assign National Guard troops to go to every grocery store and stand in front of the frozen foods, screaming, "Back off! Back off! The clam strips could come back to life!" [pause] Ooooh. I, uhhh, I saw a blue sky in my head for a minute.
Lewis Black
On Monday, the Chronicle ran a long piece on Herb Caen, by Herb Caen. My first reaction was, "My God, he's dead." After all, the last Caen piece to run that long and that far away from the Macy's ad was his exquisite obituary for Benny Goodman - social and personal history that read like being gathered around the radio. And it would make sense to assign Caen to his own obituary, as he is the reigning master of the art and known to meet his deadline no matter what the obstacle. These are inappropriately morbid thoughts on the occasion of Caen's 50th anniversary of writing daily columns. It's a joyous occasion because it means this unnervingly youthful 70-year-old genius has only about 50 more years of columns to do before the Chronicle is on its feet again. Then, maybe, they'll give him a vacation without making him write about it. I hope the Royal holds up.
Herb Caen
Obviously it can be a mistake to assign brilliance in proportion to wealth. We cannot see a persons potential, only his or her results, so we often misjudge people by thinking that the results must reflect the person. The normal accident theory of life shows not that the connection between actions and rewards is random but that random influences are as important as our qualities and actions.
Leonard Mlodinow
