Jillian's Specials
Jillian's Specials | Knowledge, Reality, and Perception | Human Nature | Human Opinions | Human Emotions

"I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon --- if I can. I seek opportunity --- not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done."

Dean Alfange

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge

"Excellence can be obtained if you care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical, and expect more than others think is possible."

Unknown

"You don’t need a satellite to see the cosmic microwave background radiation! Turn on your TV to a channel that’s not broadcasting: a few percent of the snow on your screen is the Universe talking to you --- or rather, whispering. What’s it saying? It’s saying, "Try to understand me." However, like the Oracle at Delphi, you have to know how and what to ask. You have to ask the right question, at the right time, in the right way. The answers are sometimes inscrutable. The answers may be misleading (as in, “If Athens attacks Persia, a great empire will be destroyed.”) You may also regret having learned the answer.

"On the other hand, the Universe is patient. It never changes its story. It waits for some mortal to come along and ask the right question in the right way by doing the right experiment and listening carefully with an open mind to the oracle --- to experiments. If you don’t let your theoretical preconceptions get in the way, you can understand the language of the oracle.

"The Universe is also whispering, "You will try to understand me, because that’s what you humans have got to do." "

Robert C. Cowen
CS Monitor October 21, 2004>Commentary>Science Notes>An Occasional Column: "Where Physics Meets Faith",

"To use the rhetoric of science to sell the idea that historical inequity should be embraced as biological inevitability is an insult to those who value a common humanity."

Richard Cooper
CS Monitor March 03, 2005>Sci/Tech>Computers & Technology: "A place for race in medicine?"

"Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away."

Sir Arthur Helps

"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing."

Enrique Jardiel Poncela

"Then I will indeed propose a toast," Holmes said, lifting his glass as an indication for the others to join him. "To my dear companions. To old friends and new. To dragons, elves, men and even cats. May our roads never end. May we always fly an open sky. May life be grand and glorious. I ask you know to join me in proposing a toast to Adventure. May we always enjoy it in full and proper measure, and never face the grim specter of boredom."

The others hesitated, wondering if they really wanted to join him in that rash toast.

Elf Lord Alberess, aka Sherlock Holmes, "Dragons on the Town" (p.295)

Knowledge, Reality, and Perception
Jillian's Specials | Knowledge, Reality, and Perception | Human Nature | Human Opinions | Human Emotions

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."

Albert Einstein

"That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."

Goethe "Faust"

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Education is hanging around until you have caught on."

Robert Frost

"Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning."

Edmund Wilson

"No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not some day be antiquated."

Ellen Glasgow

"Technology's not going to compensate for the inherent weakness of human beings."

Forrester Dalton

"And don't worry about the world coming to an end today; it's already tomorrow in Australia."

Charles Schulz

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."

Norman Vincent Peale

"We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."

The Talmud

"It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinions of things."

Epictetus

"An uneducated man is harmless. A well-educated man is unbeatable. A half-educated man is merely dangerous."

Unknown (from NetStorm)

"A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history."

"Ways of Seeing" (p.38)

"Do you think knowledge always lies in safe, clean places where nothing or anyone is disturbed? That you can always learn by daylight and always sleep without dreams afterwards?"

Meguet Vervaine, "The Sorceress and the Cygnet" (p.108)

"Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny."

Carl Schurz

"But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure,
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line;
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found aTruth.'"

Gambitt, Furacia (and he says it's from 'The Prophet')

"If the proton-neutron mass difference were not about twice the mass of the electron, one would not obtain the couple of hundred or so stable nucleides that make up the elements and are the basis of chemistry and biology. Similarly, if the gravitational mass of the proton were significantly different, one would not have had stars in which these nucleides could have been built up, and if the initial expansion of the universe had been slightly smaller or slightly greater, the universe would either have collapsed before such stars could have evolved or would have expanded so rapidly that stars would never have been formed by gravitational condensation.

"Indeed, some people have gone so far as to elevate these restrictions on the initial conditions and the parameters to the status of a principle, the anthropic principle, which can be paraphrased as, "Things are as they are because we are." According to one version of the principle, there is a very large number of different, separate universes with different values of physical parameters and different initial conditions. Most of these universes will not provide the right conditions for the development of the complicated structures needed for intelligent life to develop and to ask the question, "Why is the universe as we observe it?" The answer, of course, is that if it were otherwise, there would not be anyone to ask the question."

Stephen Hawking, "Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays" (p.52)

"It's only legend because it happened so long ago!" Arhu said. "But once upon a time, it was now! They did the best they could, once upon a time. And this is now, too! ... What kind of gods would make you keep making the same mistakes that They made, just because They did it that way once? They'd be crazy! Or cruel! If things have changed, and new problems need new solutions, why shouldn't we enact them? If They're good gods, wouldn't They?"

Arhu, "The Book of Night with Moon" (p.334)

"I always seem to come in on the end of things," Dar sighed.
"And the beginning." Sam's face lit with a rare, dazzling smile. "That's what comes after the end, you know."

Dar and Sam, "Escape Velocity" (p.148)

"There are no happy endings because nothing ever ends."

Schmendrick the magician, the movie The Last Unicorn

"We are literally the ashes of long-dead stars."

"Gravity's Fatal Attraction" (p.41)

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy? I would say that I am a realist in the sense that I think there is a universe out there waiting to be investigated and understood. I regard the solipsist position that everything is the creation of our imagination as a waste of time. No one acts on that basis. But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory. I therefore take the view, which has been described as simple-minded or naive, that a theory of physics is just a mathematical model that we use to describe the results of observations. A theory is a good theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations, and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of a theory. This view of scientific theories may make me an instrumentalist or a positivist --- as I have said above, I have been called both. The person who called me a positivist went on to add that everyone knew that positivism was out of date --- another case of refutation be denegration. It may indeed be out of date in that it was yesterday's intellectual fad, but the positivist position I have outlined seems the only possible one for someone who is seeking new laws, and new ways, to describe the universe. It is no good appealing to reality because we don't have a model-independent concept of reality."

Stephen Hawking, "Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays" (p.44)

Human Nature
Jillian's Specials | Knowledge, Reality, and Perception | Human Nature | Human Opinions | Human Emotions

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

T.S. Eliot

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Goethe

"You need to ask why is it that we're so surprised when the alleged BTK killer [in Wichita] ends up being someone who lives among us and works in our church and is a Cub Scout leader. We want evil to be monstrous because, if evil is monstrous, then by definition it doesn't look like us."

Daryl Koehn
CS Monitor March 10, 2005>USA>Society & Culture: "Calling Evil by Name"

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

Unknown

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."

Sirius Black, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (p.525)

"If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose."

"Demian" (prologue)

"This is the price of history and lies, that we bury out past to hide the dirtiness of our foundations from ourselves, then forget whether our houses have been built on rock or sand."

Medwind Song, "Fire in the Mist" (p.229)

"Temptation is temptation, obsession is obsession, and choice is choice."

Isar Chelladin, "Dog Wizard" (p.351)

"One cannot think well, sleep well, love well if one has not dined well."

Virginia Woolf

"Tell a man there are 400 billion stars in the sky and he'll believe you, but tell him a bench is covered in wet paint and he has to touch it."

Jeanne

"And like all wizards and all kings and all gods, they eventually came to discover that the persuit of goodness imposed uncomfortable confinements, and the persuit of evil for evil's sake became wearying after a while, and lost its novelty --- but that the persuit of power never failed to enchant."

"Diplomacy of Wolves" (p.45)

"Mass hysteria is never that far beneath the skin, I suppose. A human being is a thinking animal, but crowds don't seem to be."

Father Marco, "Escape Velocity" (p.115)

"He wears the mask and his face changes to fit it."

Unknown

"The man who knows the future makes no mistakes. But such a man isn't a man. He's a god."

Jaim, "Vengeance of Dragons" (p.18)

Human Opinions
Jillian's Specials | Knowledge, Reality, and Perception | Human Nature | Human Opinions | Human Emotions

"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers."

Voltaire

"You can't change the law unless you participate in the lawmaking process ... Technology is relentlessly lowering the barrier to entry in that process."

Cory Doctorow

"I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it. But on the other hand, so much is said about the usefulness of science that I have been more concerned with the fact that people seem to completely put aside the cultural value of science. Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you. That one can derive joy from studying and understanding science, that one can learn science the way one enjoys music or art --- it seems to me people ignore these aspects. Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better."

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

"What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die. And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The clichés. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are ... We use statistics not to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist ... Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten."

Andrea Dworkin

"There's more to people than some defined label," said Arcie. "There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorders or fence-sittin'. There's prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance, pride, society, morals, animosity, preference, values, religion, circumstance, humor, perversity, honor, vengeance, jealousy, frustration ... hundreds o' factors, from the past and in every present moment, as decides what some one person'll do in an individious situation."

Arcie, "Villains by Necessity" (p.376)

"A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done."

Cardinal Newman

"Having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects which I once thought right but found otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgement of others."

Benjamin Franklin, at the close of the Constitutional Convention 9/17/1787

"This will enable you to receive wisdom from unlikely sources. To declare that some are evil closes the potential for redemption. It may be politically sellable in the short run, but it is a fatal and destructive long-term strategy."

Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
CS Monitor 10/25/04>Commentary>Opinion> "Humanity is not red or blue"

"Be true to yourself. You just have the same problem that all talented, ambitious people have. We want to be everything and do everything all at once, but you can't. Just know the one thing you really are in heart and spirit, and let everything else be your diversions."

Mira, Lady Kasdamir Gerran, "Human, Beware!" (p.145)

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."