A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for
understanding in technological matters.
-Marshall
McLuhan A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-William James Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people
are conservatives.
-John Stuart Mill I have given my life to opening this path, but when I look back
there's no one following me.
-Morihei Ueshiba "O-Sensei",
founder of the martial art of aikido
I was in a taxi with O-Sensei, and I said to him, "I really want
to do your aikido." He said, "That's very strange. Everyone else wants to do
their aikido."
-Robert Nadeau Even the most powerful metaphor is capable of yielding only
partial truth. No metaphor tells the whole story from all sides, and hence no
vision of the present, let alone the future, can ever be complete or final.
The recognition that no knowledge can be complete, no metaphor entire, is
itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism. It grants even to adversaries
the possibility of partial truth, and to oneself the possibility of
error.
-Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave
The sickness and madness of those days--I'm glad to be free of
them. It's a time for martyrs now. And if I'm to be one, it
will be in the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing
that can save this country. I've learned it the hard way, but
I've learned it.
-Malcolm X, two days before his assassination in a hail of
gunfire at the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, February 21, 1965.
A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the
fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part
of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely
economic.
-R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism, taken from E.F. Schumacher, Small is
Beautiful. Specialisation paralyses, ultra-specialisation kills.
Palaeontology is littered with such catastrophes.
-P. Teilhard de
Chardin, Le PhÈnomËne Humain, trans. Bernard Wall
Freedom's just another word for
Nothin' left to
lose
-K. Kristofferson and F. Foster, Me and Bobby
McGee If you have attained mastery of swordlessness, you will never be
without a sword.
-Yagyu Munenori, 17th century Japanese
sword master, trans. Thomas Cleary Above all, what I learned from my Sensei was how to wait. I
believe I learned the "meaning" of waiting on one foot. If I understand
anything in this life, it is how to wait. It is not an answer. But for me it
is everything.
-Sadaharu Oh, legendary Japanese home run
hitter, from his autobiography Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball
I took him [Dainin Katagiri Roshi] to a junior high school once --
he'd been invited to introduce that pubescent audience to Buddhism and Zen. I
couldn't believe what he said. "Do you think God is far away? Do you think Zen
is far away? Do you think it is hard to understand? It's just toilet paper!
That's all it is. You may not think so. But that's what it is! You may think
Zen is something wonderful and in some heaven. It is just toilet paper!"
In the car on the way back he turned to me and said, "I don't
think they understood."
-David Chadwick, THANK YOU
AND OK! A Zen failure in Japan Any representation of God produces accordingly.
-Joseph
Chilton Pearce, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg Don't believe everything you think!
-Seen on a bumper sticker
Long experience has taught me not always to believe in the
limitations indicated by purely theoretical considerations. These, as we well
know, are based on insufficient knowledge of all the relevant
factors.
-Guglielmo Marconi The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as
not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no
one will believe it.
-Bertrand Russell Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.
-Bertrand Russell We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My
own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
-Niels Bohr
On two occasions I have been asked (by members of Parliament),
"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the
right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the
kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a
question.
-Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical
Engine, precursor to the modern computer The computer is a greater threat to the [nuclear] family than all
the abortion laws and gay rights movements and pornography in the
world.
-Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as
smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them
halfway.
-Bernard Avishai They use Microsoft Word. I use vi.
-Irene Pasternak, a consultant at Microsoft, when asked by her boss why it seemed she did eight times more work than his other employees
The question of whether a computer can think is no more
interesting than the question of whether a submarine can
swim.
-Edsger W. Dijkstra Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-Leonard
Brandwein
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