So here we are with this mo0nth’s collection of quotes. Lot’s of “sound bite” sized ones this time.
Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action.
[Aristotle]
Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes; yet they are usually left unchronicled.
[William Ramsay]
The very nature of the quantum theory forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively.
[Niels Bohr]
There was no “before” the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.
[John D Barrow]
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
[Albert Einstein]
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.
[Plato]
We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public offices.
[Aesop]
All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.
[Marshall McLuhan]
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
[Oscar Wilde, De Profundis]
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
[Charles Darwin]
A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.
[Aristotle]
Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.
[Noam Chomsky]
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
[Carl Sagan]
A major character in A Psalm for the Wild-Built [by Becky Chambers] is a “tea monk”, a person who bikes around the countryside, accompanied by a nature-loving robot, with the goal of making people really nice cups of tea.
[Annlee Newitz; New Scientist; 13 May 2023]
No invention – good or bad – has ever come from one individual’s brain. They always need other people’s ideas. Acknowledging all those contributors would improve the scientific process, and might help with workers’ rights too. If we want a solid plan for where we are going next, as humans and as a planet, we can’t stuff our minds with endless tales of mass destruction. We also need stories about people who do science collectively, while taking a lot of tea breaks, alongside stories about what it is like to accomplish a few constructive things despite living in civilisations that are often unjust and downright nasty. We need good science and tech, but first we need good inspiration.
[Annlee Newitz; New Scientist; 13 May 2023]