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Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk; the writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the public — as an interpreter.

[opening passage of The Cloister and the Hearth] Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. Before Spinoza, philosophers by and large spoke in behalf of mind OR matter, mind AND matter. Spinoza, however, was able to deduce from his major axioms the conclusion that mind and matter are the same substance viewed from different perspectives. From one perspective — which might be called a form of realism — we are prepared to claim that every existing thing triggers in us an idea of it by way of sensations, images, memories and the like. From another perspective — call it idealism — since we are conscious only of sensations and ideas — we are obliged to accept these as the only constituents of reality. [, page 270-1] Central to the Augustinian epistemology is his distinction between knowledge and wisdom, the former being "a rational cognizance of temporal things," while the latter is "an intellectual cognizance of eternal things." For Augustine, intellect and reason were different faculties. Reason was, indeed, a guiding light by which we might navigate through a confusing world, but reason alone could not equip us with that sublime knowledge of the eternal. And, of course, "it is not difficult to judge which is to be preferred or postponed to which." [, page 124, Augustine quotes from De Trinitate, Book XII, Ch. 15] I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues] No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. You must attempt the thing you think you cannot do. I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head. God only sends as much pain as you can handle. [quoting a saying of the Marines] I've taught them how to live; now I'll teach them how to die. Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture. [Psychoanalysis and Civilization, 1962] The science of human nature belongs to people who are not afraid to live independent lives. They alone have the flexible access to experience which can bring human wisdom and strength into being, and once these assets exist, they will send forth their influence with an authority that cannot be resisted, unmindful of artificial man made boundaries, reaching anywhere in the world. [end of his autobiography, A Renegade Psychiatrist's Story, 1979] We live in an ignorant and immoral world. One of the most famous stories about Rembrandt concerns his painting Night Watch. After his death, no one wanted it. Finally, a gymnasium agreed to hang it on their back wall if the top foot of the painting would be cut off so it would fit. Today, this artistic masterpiece is known only in a mutilated form. [from a speech given December 1, 1998 at the University of Memphis entitled "The Rise and Fall and then Rise Again of 19th Century Traditional Academic Humanist Art"] Our 20th century has marked a period that celebrated the bizarre, the novel and the outrageous for its own sake. The defining parameter of greatness to Modernism is "Has it ever been done before?", "Is it totally original where there is no derivation from any former schools of art?", "Does it outrage?", "Does it expand the definition of what can be called art?" I propose to you today that if everything is art then nothing is art. If I call a table a chair have I expanded the definition of the word table? Would this make me brilliant? If I call a frog an alligator have I expanded the definition of frog? If I call a nail a hammer, have I expanded the definition of the word nail? Am I now a genius? If I call screeching car wheels great music have I expanded the definition of music? Or in reality have I perpetrated a fraud on the people who wanted to buy tables, frogs, nails and music and instead got chairs, alligators, hammers and a headache Modern and Post-Modern Art is nihilistic and anti human. It denegrates humanity along with our hopes, dreams, desires and the real world in which we live. All reference to any of these things is forbidden in the canonistic halls of modernist ideology. We can see that their hallowed halls are a hollow shell, a vacuous vacant vault that locks their devotees away from life and humanity while stripping mankind of his dignity. It ultimately bores the overwhelming bulk of its would be audience who can find nothing with which to relate. It has been called exciting and cutting edge, but the sad truth is that it is incredibly humdrum and monotonous. Whether you glue together pieces of plastic or shards of glass, assemble metal scraps or piles of feathers, whether you dribble little dollops of colors or drag fat uneven slashes of black, whether you compile a mountain of paper or wrap the statue of liberty, the effect is always the same: meaningless primitivism. [from a speech given December 1, 1998 at the University of Memphis entitled "The Rise and Fall and then Rise Again of 19th Century Traditional Academic Humanist Art"] Crawl — it's the first step. I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault and I have no faults. Despair is a useless emotion. Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform. [] Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. He who lives in the ideal and leaves it expressed in society or in art enjoys a double immortality. The eternal has absorbed him while he lived, and when he is dead his influence brings others to the same absorption, making them, through that ideal identity with the best in him, reincarnations and perennial seats of all in him which he could rationally hope to rescue from destruction. He can say, without any subterfuge or desire to delude himself, that he shall not wholly die; for he will have a better notion than the vulgar of what constitutes his being. By becoming the spectator and confessor of his own death and of universal mutation, he will have identified himself with what is spiritual in all spirits and masterful in all apprehension; and so conceiving himself, he may truly feel and know that he is eternal. [Reason in Religion, page 273] Sanity is a madness put to good uses. There are two stages in the criticism of myths The first treats them angrily as superstititions; the second treats them smilingly as poetry Religion is human experience interpreted by human imagination The idea that religion contains a literal, not a symbolic, representation of truth and life is simply an impossible idea. Whoever entertains it has not come within the region of profitable philosophizing on that subject Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy We seek rather to honor the piety and understand the poetry embodied in these fables. [quoted on pages 543-544 of Durant's The Story of Philosophy] Everything has been figured out except how to live. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. Before you can build a house, you must first believe that the bricks are in fact bricks [quoted by Richard Milner] We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people. To compose music, all you have to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times Peter Pauper Press (1975)] No man is ever completely and permanently a stranger to his fellow-man. Man belongs to man. Man has claims on man. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times, Peter Pauper Press (1975)] One must speak to the heart of the individual; only then does one feel the power of the idea. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times Peter Pauper Press (1975)] The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times Peter Pauper Press (1975)] Through their own conduct [people] often lock themselves out of the best that is within them. Only afterward do they realize how poor they have become. They have cut themselves off from the world of goodness and beauty within them. They stretch their hands out but do not reach goodness, beauty and truth. So many people have to bear this burden. It is what makes them lose heart. They pass a garden and know that the flowers blossoming in it are no longer for them. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times Peter Pauper Press (1975)] Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. [Animal Protection Institute of America pamphlet] What holds the deepest meaning in life is not what we hope for, nor what we wish from life, but it is the near and far people who are in need of us What a different world this would be if men dared to look deeply at each other, if they kept in mind the prospect of being torn from each other. Each would then become sacred to the other because of death. [quoted in Thoughts for Our Times Peter Pauper Press (1975)] He who boasts of his ancestry praises the merits of another. I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do? If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. The best thing in life is to die young, but to delay it as long as possible. The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. There is no sincerer love than the love of food. A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. Marry money. [advice to aspiring writers] Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate their subject matters. [] I can't recall who first pointed out that the word "explain" means literally to "flatten out." mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent [The Theory of Moral Sentiments, page 170.] There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher. Science is organized knowledge. [Education, ch. 2 (1861)] The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. [The Laws of Form, 1969] A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Death solves all problems. No man, no problems. The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided. The desire of knowledge, like the desire of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. Power corrupts, but absence of power corrupts absolutely. It is better to be quotable than to be honest. Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. I am man; nothing human is alien to me. Be gentle to all, and stern with yourself. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. Men have become the tools of their tools. The man who travels alone can leave today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. [Walden, Economy (1854)] The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode. [Walden] Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. [On the Duty of Civil Disobedience] [Walden] This war was a revolution against the moral basis of civilization. It was conceived by the Nazis in conscious contempt for the life, dignity and freedom of individual man and deliberately prosecuted by means of slavery, starvation and the mass destruction of noncombatants' lives. It was a revolution against the human soul. [Time, May 14, 1945, page 15.] The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. [What Is Art? ch. 10 (1898; repr. in Tolstoy on Art, ed. by Aylmer Maude, 1924)] All my life I wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more specific. Assassins! [to his orchestra] Everyone wants to call every hunch and burp a paradigm shift. [author of Conjuring Science, interviewed on WPR's "To The Best of Our Knowledge"] From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash. Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. The ancients stole all our ideas from us. The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Wagner's music is better than it sounds. When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, swear. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. Opportunities multiply as they are seized. Yet isn't it a miracle, the oddity of consciousness being placed in one body rather than another, in one place and not somewhere else, in one handful of decades rather than in ancient Egypt, or ninth-century Wessex, or Samoa before the missionaries came, or Bulgaria under the Turkish yoke, or the Ob Riber Valley in the days of the woolly mammoths? Billions of consciousnesses silt history full, and every one of them the center of the universe. [Self-Consciousness, page 40] God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. [last words, 1923] Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. Christianity must be divine since it has lasted 1,700 years despite the fact that it is so full of villainy and nonsense. If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. Let us console ourselves for not knowing the possible connections between a spider and the rings of Saturn, and continue to examine what is within our reach. [quoted by Daniel N. Robinson, , page 325] The multitude of books is making us ignorant. Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy. Few people have the imagination for reality. When ideas fail, words come in very handy. Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. If I make a living off it, that's great — but I come from a culture where you're valued not so much by what you acquire but by what you give away. [on Perl, the computer scripting language he invented, quoted in a C|Net interview 2/3/98] Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting. The world is comic to people who think, and tragic to people who feel. Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? [founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927] If you're going to raise the question what we know for certain, or even the question what knowledge itself is, there has to be something that you're prepared to hold on to, otherwise you're utterly at sea. I think [G. E.] Moore would have been inclined to say that, if the proposition that I've got shoes on my feet at this moment is not a proposition that I know for certain to be true, then I simply have no idea what knowledge is supposed to be; I don't know what it is that we're trying to define or scrutinize, if this isn't an example of it. And I think this is an important point. I mean, if you question absolutely everything — if you regard EVERY suggested instance of knowing as perhaps not an instance of that at all — then, so to speak, all the guide-lines go, and we no longer have any way of testing whether we're talking sense or not. In a way, we literally don't know what we're talking about. [quoted on page 118 of Brian Magee's Modern British Philosophy] You can't hold a man down without staying down with him. I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. [Chairman of IBM, 1943] Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. [British-born U.S. philosopher, author. Life (New York, 21 April 1961)] You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says "Boo!" and then laughs at itself for jumping. He who hesitates is a damned fool. I generally avoid temptation except when I can't resist it. When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. As we read the Principia [by Newton] we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man was he who could use as a weapon that we can scarcely lift as a burden. [] A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost. To this hesitation I ascribe the barrenness of logic. [First sentence was [] It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you. [To a Common Prostitute] Descended from apes! Let us hope that isn't true, or, if it is true, that it doesn't become generally known. [1860] A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. [as quoted on page 19 of Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct] I am not young enough to know everything. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. [quoted in PC Magazine, 1/15/91, page 21] The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. There are only two tradgies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. [quoted in Strunk & White, page 8] Oscar Wilde, on his deathbed, was drifting in and out of consciousness. Once when he opened his eyes he was heard to murmur, "This wallpaper is killing me; one of us has got to go." What becomes of me has never seemed to me important, but the fates of ideas living against the grain in a nondescript world have always held me breathless. [Autobiography, Foreword] If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. 'Holy' to me means perceiving your life as a gift from God and therefore as your right rather than God doing you a favor. If you look at life like some kind of divine favor, then you end up feeling like you owe God all the time. And you don't feel worthy, and in turn no one seems worthy. Why should the creator be experienced that way when our existence is given to us, not loaned. Like the ancient rabbis taught: "A person is obliged to declare 'Because of me was the universe created.'" So when I take an apple in hand and thank the Creator for providing me with sustenance, I can do so in such a way that I experience the Creator as some stingy ogre who begrudgingly let me have something to eat, or I can experience the Creator as a generous mom. [] Covenanting, taught the ancient Judaic teachers, is a quality of relationship-ing that creates ample space for negotiation, for individuality, for re-evaluating and redefining agreements. [] Face it: it doesn't say anywhere in the Torah that you have to believe in God. Believing in yourself and in others is more important to God than believing in God. I really don't believe that God is so insecure that if we don't believe in God, God will fall apart. There's a second-century talmudic teaching that goes something like this: "If we didn't believe in God but we were nice to each other, God would be okay with that." [] God is a gentle loving friend, not a pushy, exacting, judgmental, insatiable, and psychotic deity of chronic wrath. [] Judaic law and ethics are largely situational, are part of a continuing process relative to time, circumstance and intent. [] Judaism — even the most orthodox versions of it — believe that you don't have to be Jewish to go to Heaven or to be loved by God. [] Judaism is traditionally not a tradition-fixated religion. [] We've got to see people as individuals, not as more gook for the gob, more mass for the collective. [] A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. [Culture and Value (ed. by G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, 1980), 1942 entry.] Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. [Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sct. 6:4311 (1921, tr. 1922).] No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness. A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. The truth is more important than the facts. Nobody can give you freedom. Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire. A newspaper called the US and USSR superpowers. There is only one superpower in the world today: the fragile human soul. [from a 1980's WNYC radio interview] Do, or do not. There is no "try". [The Empire Strikes Back] It is impossible to change the thinking of most people, but it is still necessary to try. [as told by Karl Laub, 1987] Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. Duct tape is like the Force. It has a dark side, it has a light side, and it holds the Universe together. A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. [response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies] But what is it good for? [Engineer at IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Division, commenting on the microchip, 1968] Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy. [drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859] I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. [The Prentice Hall editor in charge of business books, 1957] Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. [1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work] The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? [associates of David Sarnoff in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920's] This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. [Western Union internal memo, 1876] You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training. [response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus] Computers in the future may weigh no more than one and a half tons [Popular Mechanics, 1949] Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. [1905, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper. [on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."] Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament. [discredited deconstructionist and Nazi sympathiser] We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. [rejecting the Beatles, 1962] I say deliberately that it is the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature. The obscenity of Rabelais is innocent compared with its leprous and scabrous horrors. All the secret sewers of vice are canalised in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ The book is already the bible of beings who are exiles and outcasts in this and in every civilised country. It is also adopted by the Freudians as the supreme glory of their dirty and degraded cult. [reviewing Ulysses in the Sunday Express (Dublin 1922); quoted in Stan Gébler Davies' "James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist" (Davis-Poynter, 1975), p.247, n.d. Note: Joyce insisted that the review be included in publicity material. The review is not listed in Deming's "James Joyce: The Critical Heritage" (1970)] Everything that can be invented has been invented. [Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon. [British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873] Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. [Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929] Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. [Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre] 640k ought to be enough for anybody. There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. So we went to Atari and said, "Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you." And they said, "No." So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, "Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet." [Apple Computer Inc. founder on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer] Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. [President, Royal Society, 1895, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] Lighter than air travel is impossible. Radio has no future. There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. [speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1900] X-rays are a hoax. There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. [winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. [President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977] Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. [Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872] It isn't that Liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so. Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards. If you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book. Science, per se, doesn't deal with the complex quality called "humanness" any more than it does with such equally complex concepts as love, faith or trust. Without experiments there is no science, no way to prove or disprove any idea. I maintain that concepts such as humanness are beyond the purview of science because no idea about them can be tested experimentally. [Chairman of the department of human genetics at Yale University School of Medicine, quoted in the November 1981 issue of Life magazine on the question of when a fetus becomes a human being.] If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. [on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads] Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching. [1921, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable wherefore for the sake of their lusts [women] consort with devils. [Malleus Maleficarum, detailed legal and theological document (c. 1486) regarded as the standard handbook on witchcraft, including its detection and its extirpation, until well into the 18th century. Its appearance did much to spur on and sustain some two centuries of witch-hunting hysteria in Europe.] Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? [Warner Bros. Pictures, c.1927, quoted in a 1985 TRW ad] I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. [Chairman of IBM, 1943] Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. He who stops being better stops being good. One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius. Man's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions. [quoted on page 70 of the May 1982 issue of Science Digest] I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. The price a man has to pay for not repeating the mistakes of the past is his greater awareness of the present. [as quoted by Tony Rostron in "The Storm"] I don't have any ideas that are more than seven hundred words long. If the human mind were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it. The trouble with the integers is that we have examined only the small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't get our hands on or even begin to think about in any very definite way. So maybe all the action is really inaccessible and we're just fiddling around. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions. I've had this image of a creature, in another galaxy perhaps, a child creature, and he's playing a game with his friends. For a moment he's distracted. He just thinks about numbers, primes, a simple proof of the twin-prime conjecture, and much more. Then he loses interest and returns to his game. [from The Man Who Loves Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman, about Paul Erdos ("AIR Dish"), Atlantic Monthly 11/87] Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming. [from Possible Worlds and other Essays (1927), by John Burden Sanderson Haldane (1892-1964), English geneticist] Mind and matter in our little speck of the universe are only two out of infinite varieties of existence which we are not competent to conceive — in the midst of which we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a London balcony has of the life of the great city [Essay on Materialism (1878), quoted by Richard Milner] A friend of mine once showed a photograph of the Andromeda galaxy to the art director of a magazine on which he was working. The art director said, 'That's gorgeous! But can we get a shot of it from another angle?' Anybody who remembers the 60's wasn't there. Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2. Advising the President. 3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. [David Letterman] Better that a girl has beauty than brains because boys see better than they think. Deep down, actors are skin deep. Did you hear the one about the statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 9 inches? Happiness is Seeing Lubbock, Texas, in the Rear View Mirror. [song title] I can't stand cheap people. It makes me real mad when someone says something like "Hey, when are you going to pay me that hundred dollars you owe me?" or "Do you have that fifty dollars you borrowed?" Man, quit being so cheap. [Saturday Night Live: Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts"] I'd Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me Than Have a Frontal Lobotomy [song title] If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they're thinking, you can throw a real grenade. [Saturday Night Live: Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts"] My plot to take over the world is thickening. One thing that makes me believe in UFOs is, sometimes I lose stuff. Teachers are those who help us in resolving problems which, without them, we wouldn't have. There are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count and those who can't. [contributed by web friend Jose Forget] What's the difference between a centaur and a senator? One's a cross between a man and a horse's ass, and the other's a creature from mythology. What's the difference between a Zeppelin and Rush Limbaugh? One's a Nazi gasbag and the other's a lighter-than-air machine. Why do Tibetan Buddhists have such trouble with their vacuum cleaners? They lack attachments. Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. [from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] It was a press conference. "I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon." "Can you tell us what that means?" "I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that. "No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is. "And if it turns out that you're right, you'll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a er 'Supernormal ' — not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a 'Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer'. We'll probably want to shove a 'Quasi' in there somewhere to protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my life."

— So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Chapter 33 It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. Time is nature's way of making certain that everything doesn't happen all at once. We stand at a crossroads. One path leads to despair, the other to destruction. Let's hope we make the right choice. We're here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know. What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork. I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Hard work never killed anybody, but why take the chance? When it comes to gender, why can't we count higher than two? [quoted in the November 1990 flyer for Performance Space 122] The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering! Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. If it's a good script I'll do it. And if it's a bad script, and they pay me enough, I'll do it. Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair. In the future, religions will charge people a large fee at birth — and then pretty much leave them alone. I can only assume that a 'Do Not File' document is filed in a 'Do Not File' file. [Senate Intelligence Subcommittee Hearing, 1975] Madam [seeing a man with his pants down]: "Sir, I am surprised." Gentleman: "No, madam. You are astonished. I am surprised." [explaining the distinction between surprise and astonishment] That's just the sort of criticism up with which I will not put! [on hearing his speech criticised in Parliament for having "dangling particples."] Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else — and usually it's reading his own handwriting. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. I have spent a lot of time searching through the Bible for loopholes. Don't ever grab a black man's knee. Cause it ain't a knee. He was drawn to the higher things because you could pursue them in the shade. Catholics believe forgiveness is a divine quality — so they don't practice it personally. Late Night leaves no sticky residue like Ted Koppel's Nightline. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. [quoted by Amazon Books] Whatever it is, I'm against it. Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the one who sold it. If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? The Income Tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other. We are all ignorant — just about different things. I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading. I have a large collection of seashells, which I keep scattered all over the beaches of the world. Maybe you've seen it. You can't have everything. Where would you put it? "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." [The WOPR computer from War Games after practicing Thermonuclear War for a bit.] Chris: "Time is but the stream I go a-fishin' in." — Henry David Thoreau. Ed: "Pass me a sandwich." — Ed Chigliack. ["Northern Exposure," episode 81] Psychiatrist: "So, how do you feel about it?" J. R. Ewing: "I'm not paying $200 an hour for you to ask me questions!" ["Dallas," 1/13/89] "Commander, may I borrow that formidable looking sidearm of yours? Thank you. Robbie, point this thing at that alfia frutix out there on the terrace. Fire." blaster. "You understand the mechanism?" "Yes, Morbius. A simple blaster." "Alright, now turn around here. Point it at the commander. Aim right between the eyes. Fire." [Shorting-out electronic sound effects.] "You see, he's helpless. Locked in a sub-electronic dilemma between my direct orders and his basic inhibitions against harming rational beings. (pause) Cancelled." [from Forbidden Planet, screenplay by Cyril Hume, from a story by Irving Block and Allen Adler] Quinn: "I'll bet any quantum mechanic in the service would give the rest of his life for a chance to fool around with this gadget." [from Forbidden Planet, screenplay by Cyril Hume, from a story by Irving Block and Allen Adler] Nietzche: "God is dead." God: "Nietzche is dead." Question: What joke about Wittgenstein ends in "9W"? Answer: Do you spell your name with a "V", Professor Wittgenstein? So the chicken and the egg are in bed and the chicken is smiling and lighting a cigarette. "Well!" says the egg. "I guess we answered that question!"
There was a young man who said, "God,
It has always struck me as odd That the sycamore tree Simply ceases to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

"Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad: And that's why the tree Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God."
The limerick form is complex.
Its contents run chiefly to sex. It burgeons with virgins, And masculine urgin's,
And swarms with erotic effex.
You think you own whatever land you land on
The earth is just a debt that you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you.
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You learn things you never knew you never knew.

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grins?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run then, pine trails of the forest,
Come taste the sun-sweet berries of the earth,
Come roll in all the riches all around you,
And for once never wonder what they're worth.

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers,
The heron and the otter are my friends,
And we're all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends.

How high does the cycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know,
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn morn.
For whether we're white or copper skin,
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountain,
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind.
You can own the earth and still
All you'll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind.
["Colors of the Wind" from the movie Pocahontas]
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Every tear from every eye,
Becomes a babe in eternity.
My books (which do not know that I exist)
are as much part of me as is this face,
the temples gone to grey and the eyes grey,
the face I vainly look for in the mirror,
tracing its outline with a concave hand.
Not without understandable bitterness,
I feel now that the quintessential words
expressing me are in those very pages
which do not know me, not in those I have written.
It is better so. The voices of the dead
will speak to me for ever.
[My Books]
I can't give you anything but love, baby.
[Poems, No. xiii (c.57 B.C.) Copley, tr.]
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Of a book brought to Boston by Hannotte
All the prominent censors said "Ban it!" For the book writ by Dean They deemed was obscene.
"Let 'em ban it," said Hannotte, "Goddamit!"
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
[from The Ballad of East and West]
A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom.
[from Tutti Frutti]
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

[poem that Steven Weinberg included in a lecture on the recently discovered acceleration of the expansion of the universe, which according to the New York Times of 11/30/99 "captures the endless frustration that physicists have faced in calculating the weight of emptiness"]
Love is not all;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
[Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview, 1923]
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind.
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
[Dirge Without Music, 1928]
There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.
[Conversation at Midnight, 1937]
For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey.

For he is of the tribe of the tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is the term of the Angel tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good cat.

For by stoaking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadrupede.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

[Christopher Smart is now acknowledged as one of the most remarkable poets of his century. Jubilate Agno [Rejoice in the Lamb]: a Song from Bedlam was written in 1758 (while he was in an asylum) but was not published until 1939. This excerpt is about Smart's cat, Jeoffrey.]
When the child was a child
that was the time of these questions:
Why am I me and why not you?
Why am I here and why not there?
When did time begin and where does space end?
Isn't life under the sun just a dream?
[from the film Wings of Desire]
I have had my dream — like others —
and it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
with feet planted on the ground
and look up at the sky —
feeling my clothes about me,
the weight of my shoes,
the rim of my hat, air passing in and
out at my nose —
and decide to dream no more.
[Thursday]
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were all meant to shine as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone!
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
[a prayer entitled "Deepest Fear" from the book "A Return to Love", Harper Collins, 1992]
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us, but in the course of time
Through seeking we may learn and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
For even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it:
For all is but a woven web of guesses.
[Karl Popper's favorite Greek passage, quoted on page 24 of Philosophy and the Real World by Bryan Magee] Don't abuse the earth. Life is sacred. [graffiti written on 324 E.9 by "dangerous anarchists" in the early '90s] He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Thoughts are a hollow space in the heart, one inch square. If you can talk you can sing. If you can walk you can dance. A stumble may prevent a fall. Use soft words and hard arguments. Success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get. The reverse side also has a reverse side. Words are fingers pointing to the moon. When one must, one can. Tell the truth and run. [It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system. A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement. Bobby Knight told me this: "There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense." In other words a good offense wins. [to the City Club of Chicago, comparing the offensive capabilities of the Warsaw Pact with the defensive system of NATO, 9/8/88, reported in Esquire 8/92] El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are so many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans, I have heard a single voice. For NASA, space is still a high priority. [9/5/90] Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here. [4/25/89, reported in Esquire 8/92] I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change. [5/22/89, reported in Esquire 8/92] I deserve respect for the things I did not do. I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future. I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix. I stand by all the misstatements that I've made. I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure. [to the Phoenix Republican Forum, 3/23/90, reported in Esquire 8/92. Also reported by Reuters 5/2/90] Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it. [5/20/92, reported in Esquire, 8/92] It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the — to the back! [8/17/88, reported in Esquire 8/92] Mars is essentially in the same orbit Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe. [8/11/89, reported in Esquire 8/92] My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right. One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is "to be prepared". [12/6/89, reported in Esquire 8/92] Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases revenue enhancement. Not so. No one was fooled. People are not homeless if they are sleeping in the streets of their own hometowns. People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history. Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children. [9/18/90] Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us. Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a Mother and child. [US News and World Report 10/10/88] The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make. The future will be better tomorrow. The global importance of the Middle East is that it keeps the Near East and the Far East from encroaching on each other. The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century. [9/15/88] The loss of life will be irreplaceable. [after the San Francisco earthquake, 10/19/89, reported in Esquire 8/92] This election is about who's going to be the next President of the United States! [9/2/88, reported in Esquire 8/92] This President is going to lead us out of this recovery. Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things. We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur. We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward. We expect them to work toward the elimination of human rights. We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a *part* of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a *part* of Europe. We're going to have the best educated American people in the world. Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts. What a waste it is to lose one's mind — or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. [The Vice President garbling the United Negro College Fund slogan in a 5/9/89 address to that group, gleefully quoted by Newsweek, reported in Esquire 8/92, reported in the NY Times 12/9/92.] You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and as far as I'm concerned, happy campers you will always be.