Here be this month’s collection of quotes miscellaneous.
Words transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.
[Ursula K Le Guin]
There is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale … What appears [in the media] is generally at best a collection of trivial and almost unrelated fragments, while at worst, it can often be a really harmful source of confusion and misinformation.
[David Bohm, 1917-92]
The scientist is engaged in a … “dialogue” with nature (as well as with his fellow human beings). Thus, when a scientist has an idea, this is tested by observation. When it is found (as generally happens) that what is observed is only similar to what he had in mind and not identical, then from a consideration of the similarities and the differences he gets a new idea which is in turn tested. And so it goes, with the continual emergence of something new that is common to the thought of scientists and what is observed in nature.
[David Bohm, 1917-92]
Robert Conquest’s Third Laws of Politics: The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Even when she is perfectly at home on the wheel [bicycle], she should remember her sex is not intended by nature for violent muscular exertion … And even when a woman has cautiously prepared herself and has trained for the work, her speed should never be that of an adult man in full muscular vigour.
[Just Championnière, French surgeon, 1895 in Scientific American]
We are living in a time that requires inventiveness and imagination. It is this kind of creative inspiration that is indigenous to PANTONE 18-3838 Ultra Violet, a blue-based purple that takes our awareness and potential to a higher level. From exploring new technologies and the greater galaxy, to artistic expression and spiritual reflection, intuitive Ultra Violet lights the way to what is yet to come.
[Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Colour Institute, on the Pantone Colour of 2018]
Religions are just ways people have come up with to deal with the fear of death and the necessities of civilization. On the philosophical side, it’s driven by the knowledge that all of us, some day, are going to die. We’re not sure if any other animals know this. Maybe they do. Elephants seem to have rituals around death. Other animals may have their own ways of understanding it that we just can’t comprehend. On the social and ritual side, the purpose of religion is to get everyone in a close-knit community on the same page about following the rules that are necessary to keep their society from collapsing into chaos and disorder.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/merry-christmas-2017/5673]
God is kind of like aliens. Either he exists right now, or he doesn’t. Whether we believe in him or not, won’t change the fact.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/merry-christmas-2017/5673]
Perhaps in a democracy the distinctive feature of decadence is not debauchery but terminal self-absorption – the loss of the capacity for collective action, the belief in common purpose, even the acceptance of a common form of reasoning.
We listen to necromancers who prophesy great things while they lead us into disaster. We sneer at the idea of a “public” and hold our fellow citizens in contempt. We think anyone who doesn’t pursue self-interest is a fool.
… … …
A decadent elite licenses degraded behaviour, and a debased public chooses its worst leaders. Then our Nero panders to our worst attributes – and we reward him for doing so.
[James Traub, http://uk.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12]
Here is something genuinely new about our era: We lack not only a sense of shared citizenry or collective good, but even a shared body of fact or a collective mode of reasoning toward the truth.
A thing that we wish to be true is true; if we wish it not to be true, it isn’t. Global warming is a hoax. Barack Obama was born in Africa. Neutral predictions of the effects of tax cuts on the budget must be wrong, because the effects they foresee are bad ones.
… … …
Your story fights my story; if I can enlist more people on the side of my story, I own the truth.
[James Traub, http://uk.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12]
The reduction of all disagreeable facts and narratives to “fake news” will stand as one of Donald Trump’s most lasting contributions to American culture, far outliving his own tenure.
[James Traub, http://uk.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12]
The worship of the marketplace, and thus the elevation of selfishness to a public virtue, is a doctrine that we associate with the libertarian right. But it has coursed through the culture as a self-justifying ideology for rich people of all political persuasions &ndsh; perhaps also for people who merely dream of becoming rich.
[James Traub, http://uk.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12]
The passage of time is an illusion and life is the magician, because life only lets you see one day at a time. You remember being alive yesterday, you hope you’re going to be alive tomorrow, so it feels like you are travelling one to the other but nobody’s moving anywhere! Movies don’t really move, they’re just pictures – lots and lots of pictures, all of them still, none of them moving, just frozen moments. But if you experience those pictures one after the other, then everything comes alive.
[Dr Who, Series 10, Episode 1. Quoted at http://hardcorezen.info/doctor-who-dogen-and-the-fermi-paradox-or-happy-new-year-2018/5677]
When I make myself a sandwich I am amazed that sandwiches exist. How improbable is that? How astonishing is it that, in the vast universe, I exist in a place in which there are sandwiches? Throughout most of this endless universe, there are no sandwiches. Sandwiches can’t even exist on most planets.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/doctor-who-dogen-and-the-fermi-paradox-or-happy-new-year-2018/5677]
If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
[Richard Feynman]
Remember also that once your house is spotless, there will be no food inside for any insect that happens to stray inside and it might die of starvation. Therefore it is an act of kindness to leave directions to the nearest food bank for them.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/07/a-monks-guide-to-a-clean-house-and-mind-by-shoukei-matsumoto-digested-read]
The Axehandle Hound has a hatchet-shaped head, a handle-shaped body, and stumpy legs. This North Woods dachshund eats only the handles of axes.
Among the fish of this region we find the Upland Trout. They nest in trees and are good fliers but are scared of water.
[Jorges Luis Borges; The Book of Imaginary Beasts]
When it is so dark you cannot identify members of the same species, never mind the same sex, glowing genitals are presumably a very handy thing to have!
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/19/glow-in-the-dark-sharks-discovered-in-hawaii-etmopterus-lailae]
Boom! Boom!