Category: quotes

…yet my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me that words and writings were all nothing and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing…

Gerrard Winstanley, ‘A Watch-word to the Citie of London’ (August 26, 1649)

Papua New Guinea tribesman to explorer Bruce Parry:

I don’t know where your tribe is, but it must be rubbish. You can’t do anything. You wear these funny clothes, you can’t climb trees, and you don’t know the flora and fauna. Wherever it is you come from, it is obviously crap

Oh the joys of a clash of cultures. Reminds me of mongogo nuts

All change is the consequence of the purposeless collapse of energy and matter into disorder

– overheard on an ‘In Our Time’ about the second law of thermodynamics

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;

From Alexander Pope’s Eloisa To Abelard
(and, of course, the film Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind)

Presentiment is that long shadow of the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
The darkness is about to pass.

– Emily Dickinson

Feynmann said (according to New Scientist)

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

Which makes me think – Lucky old Feynmann, a scientist to whom science was obviously as natural as walking. For myself, I’d like all the help i can get to recognise and perform good scientific work

There’s an interesting discussion happening over at helmintholog about the evolution of foresight/insight…It reminded me of Melvin Konner’s The Tangled Wing (which has just had a second, revised, edition published – very exciting). The last section of The Tangled Wing contains the following, in a section headed “The Dawn of Wonder”:

One of the most fascinating and least discussed discoveries in the study of the wild chimpanzees was described in a short paper by Harold Bauer. He was following a well-known male through the forest of the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania when the animal stopped beside a waterfall. It seemed possible that he had deliberately gone to the waterfall rather than passing it incidentally, but that was not absolutely clear. In any case, it was an impressive spot: a stream of water cascading down from a twenty-five-foot height, about a mile from the lake, thundering into the pool below and casting mist for sixty or seventy feet; a stunning sight to come upon in the midst of a tropical forest.

The animal seemed lost in contemplation of it. He moved slowly closer and began to rock, while beginning to give a characteristic round of “pant-hoot” calls. He became more excited, and finally began to run back and forth while calling, to jump, to call louder, to drum with his fists on trees, to run back again. The behavior resembled that observed by Jane Goodall in groups of chimps at the start of a rainstorm–the “rain dance,” as it has been called. But this was one animal alone, and not surprised as the animals are by sudden rain–even if he had not deliberately sought the waterfall out, he certainly knew where it was and when he would come upon it.

He continued this activity long enough so that it seemed to merit some explanation, and he did it again in the same place on other days. Other animals were observed to do it as well. They had no practical interest in the waterfall. The animals did not have to drink from the stream or cross it in that vicinity. To the extent that it might be dangerous, it could be easily avoided, and certainly did not interest every animal. But for these it was something they had to look at, return to, study, watch, become excited about: a thing of beauty, an object of curiosity, a challenge, a fetish, an imagined creature, a god? We will never know.

But for a very similar animal, perhaps five million years ago, in the earliest infancy of the human spirit, something in the natural world must have evoked a response like this one–a waterfall, a mountain vista, a sunset, the crater of a volcano, the edge of the sea–something that stopped it in its tracks and made it watch, and move, and watch, and turn, and watch again; something that made it return to the spot, though nothing gainful could take place there, no feeding, drinking, reproducing, sleeping, fighting, fleeing, nothing animal. In just such a response, in just such a moment, in just such an animal, we may, I think, be permitted to guess, occurred the dawn of awe, of sacred attentiveness, of wonder.

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then — to loosen up.

Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone — “to relax,” I told myself — but I knew it wasn’t true.

Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home.

One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life.

She spent that night at her mother’s.

I began to think on the job.

I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka.

I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, “What is it exactly we are doing here?”

One day the boss called me in.

He said, “Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.”

This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss.

“Honey,” I confessed, “I’ve been thinking…”

“I know you’ve been thinking,” she said, “and I want a divorce!”

“But Honey, surely it’s not that serious.”

“It is serious,” she said, lower lip aquiver. “You think as much as college professors, and college professors don’t make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won’t have any money!”

“That’s a faulty syllogism,” I said impatiently.

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

“I’m going to the library,” I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche.

I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors…

They didn’t open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye.

“Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?” it asked.

You probably recognize that line.

It comes from the standard Thinker’s Anonymous poster.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting.

At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was “Porky’s.”

Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.

Life just seemed…easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today, I registered to vote as a Republican…

From Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men:

“Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany.
“Good. Now … if you trust in yourself …”
“Yes?”
“… and believe in your dreams …”
“Yes?”
“… and follow your star.. .” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Good-bye.”

(via Articulatory Loop)

Some quotes from Eric Chundler’s page of quotes about the brain:

The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little.

Gerd Sommerhoff (from Logic of the Living Brain, 1974)

I am often reminded of the image that one might just as well try to understand the sort of people that live in a city like Los Angeles by looking at the traffic patterns on the freeways, as to look at the transmission characteristics in the brain and expect to tell what sort of houses the people lived in, and whether they had Picassos on the walls or perferred the music of the Beatles.

W. Ross Adey (from The Mind: Biological Approaches To Its Functions, 1968)

Since the brain is unlike any other structure in the known universe, it seems reasonable to expect that our understanding of its functioning – if it can ever be achieved – will require approaches that are drastically different from the way we understand other physical systems.

Richard M. Restak (from The Brain. The Last Frontier, 1979)

But if the brain is not like a computer, then what is it like? What kind of model can we form in regard to its functioning? I believe there’s only one answer to that question, and perhaps it will disturb you: there is no model of the brain, nor will there ever be. That’s because the brain, as the constructor of all models, transcends all models. The brain’s uniqueness stems from the fact that nowhere in the known universe is there anything even remotely resembling it.

Richard Restak (from The Brain Has A Mind of Its Own, 1991)

The last words of the labour activist Joe Hill seem relevant today:

Don’t Mourn, Organise!

To frame a philosophy capable of coping with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our time.

Bertrand Russell, via Three-Toed Sloth

Remember Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom:

No matter how great your triumphs, or tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn’t care less

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

– Goethe

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.

John Von Neumann

Real revolution means people choking to death on their own shit

Graffiti seen by Andy, London 2001

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper

Eden Phillpotts

My feeling about technique in art is that it has the same value as technique in lovemaking. That is to say, heartfelt ineptitude has its charm and so has heartless skill, but what you really want is passionate virtuosity.

– John Barth

Murray is able to produce a look that is sneaky and frank at the same time. It is a look that gives equal credence to disaster and lecherous success. He says that in the old days of his urban entanglements he believed there was only one way to seduce a women, with clear and open desire. He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilised world-weariness and a tragic sense of history – the very things, he says, that are most natural to him. Of these he has allowed only one element, vulnerability, to insert itself gradually into his program of straighforward lust. He is trying to develop a vulnerability that women will find attractive. He works at is consciously, like a man in a gym with weights and a mirrow. But his efforts so far have produced only this half sneaky look, sheepish and wheedling.

Don DeLillo, White Noise (1984)

The single clenched fist, lifted and ready
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Tom: It is Good and True and those are some of our favourite things.

Matt: Good. True. Easy. Choose Two.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

– Philip K. Dick

‘all things flow and nothing is permanent‘

…in the midst of a putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out

– Arundhati Roy

Speaking to a !Kung bushman called !Xoma about a custom called hxaro, the anthropologist was told:

Hxaro is when I take a thing of value and give it to you. Later, much later, when you find some good thing, you give it to me. When I find something good I will give it to you, and so we will pass the years together

Asked about what would count as a fair exchange, !Xoma wouldn’t answer. Would three strings of beads be fair in exchange for a spear? Would two? Would one?

He explained that any return would be acceptable because we don’t trade with things, we trade with people

Excerpted from Deborah Tannnen’s (1990) You just don’t understand: Men and Women in Conversation, which is far better, far more sociolinquistically weighty and far more fun than it probably sounds.

(Mapping of how patterns of hxaro gift exchange between tribes maintain social networks here)

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the and that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’

– Aldous Huxley

In a mass-market economy a revolutionary song is any song you choose to sing yourself.

– Utah Philips

Nobody foresaw the world shortage of respect

– Theodore Zeldin, In An Intimate History of Humanity (1994)

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices

– William James