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“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”

 

 John D. Rockefeller

You just can't beat the person who never gives up. 

 Babe Ruth

I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.

 Abraham Lincoln

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

 Calvin Coolidge

"People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent." -

 Bob Dylan

Conservatives long ago managed to establish as unchallengeable fact that the real America cannot be found in the places where a majority of its population resides.

 Timothy Noah

I wake up in the morning with ideas that please me, and some of those ideas actually please me also later in the day when I’ve entered them into my computer.

 Donald Knuth

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;	5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

 Walt Whitman - When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.

René Descartes

Rather, it should be born of the hope that we are on the right track, and in the case that we our not, that our reasoning is organized such that we might understand why.

 ~Karlye Dilts

Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.

 ~Andrew Mason

"We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us."

 John M. Culkin

"To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

 Thomas Edison

I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class
what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be
people."

There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New
Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities
and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French
cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo.

If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best. There always seem to be
a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to
talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift
to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to
use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty of
your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right.

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, "We
are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Those words are true
again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural
war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in
your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty
inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into
the miracle that it is.

Let me back up. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle
Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for
office, I was elected, and now I serve ... I serve as a moving target for
the media who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a
"brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know ... I'm pretty old... but I
sure as Lord ain't senile.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment
freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much,
much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging
across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable
thoughts and speech are mandated. For example, I marched for civil rights
with Dr. King in 1963 - long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when
I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black
pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist. I've
worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an
audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my
rights, I was called a homophobe. I served in World War II against the Axis
powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out
innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an
anti-Semite. Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against
my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural
persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From time to time , friends and colleagues, they're essentially friends from
Time Magazine, say how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not
authorized for public consumption!" But I am not afraid. If Americans
believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys -
subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that "blatantly
irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every
area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new
anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction.
Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name
is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to
separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like
it."

Let me read a few examples. At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking
intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process
from kissing to petting to final copulation ... all clearly spelled out in a
printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who had been
infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs --- the state commissioned
announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not..... need
not..... tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team
"The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to
learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name.

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of
transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have
separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been placed in
bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their
last names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at
Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up
segregated dormitory space for black students. Yeah, I know ... that's out
of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes." Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the
March said "black." But it's a no-no now.

For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly
"Native-American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to
be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my
grandson is a thirteenth generation native American... with a capital letter
on "American."

Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of the Washington D.C.
Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while talking to
colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, "niggardly" means stingy or
scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign.
As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some people in
public employ were morons who (a) didn't know the meaning of niggardly,(b)
didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c)
actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has
evolved into telling us what to say , so telling us what to do can't be far
behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did
political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you
continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas,
surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks your
professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and
should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules
the halls of reason. You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the
fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the
Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your
counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and
politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you
validate that and abide it ... you are - by your grandfathers' standards -
cowards.

Here's another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second
Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their
findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings
would undermine big-city mayor's pending lawsuits that seek to extort
hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. I don't care
what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked
at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you?

Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free
thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't shoot me." If
you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions
between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically
about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion.

If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a
homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators
for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.

But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social
subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr.
Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people. You simply ... disobey.
Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when
told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey
social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the
awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King ...who learned it from Gandhi,
and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right
against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient
spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that
refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Vietnam. In
that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with
massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous laws
that weaken personal freedom.

But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at
risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be
humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at
Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience
discomfort. I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have
taken their toll on me.

Let me tell you a story. A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T
who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering
police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the
biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country
were outraged. Rightfully so-at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner
was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were
tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a
stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the
time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my
family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand
average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop
Killer"- every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

"I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF
I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF..."

It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me,
the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner
executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me
for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist
filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al
and Tipper Gore.

"SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...."

Well, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the
room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps,
one of them said "We can't print that."

"I know," I replied, "but Time/Warner's selling it."

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be
offered another film by Warner's, or get a good review from Time magazine.
But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk. When a
mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard
of the district attorney's office. When your university is pressured to
lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors... choke the
halls of the board of regents. When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek
on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march
on that school and block its doorways. When someone you elected is seduced
by political power and betrays you...petition them, oust them, banish them.
When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy
Christians holding a cross as it did last month ..boycott their magazine
and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed
footsteps of the great disobedience's of history that freed exiles, founded
religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in
arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country. If Dr. King
were here, I think he would agree. 

 Harvard Law School Forum, February 16, 1999

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. 

 Federalist No. 10 - http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm

This, then is part of what philosophy of science is missing: science is about learning about the real world, and this can be done by testing theories about how the world behaves, or simply by observing the world, and describing it. Both methods are surely valid, so if philosophers are to create a good working account of science, they need to pay attention to both aspects of science. 

Bob O'Hara, http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/boboh/2008/04/04/science-more-than-just-theories 

"Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit." 

 Samuel Beckett, Proust

Machines were mice and men were lions, once upon a time.  But now that it's the opposite, it's twice upon a time.

 Moondog, "Slamping Ground"

"The goal of education is not learning how to make a living.  It's learning how to make a life."

"We're talking living, breathing, wallpaper!" 

 Unattributed, from comments on http://www.foundmagazine.com/comments/4958

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. 

 Jack Kerouac

Rebels have to have rules to feel that there's a cause for their acts 

Modified from haiku:
Rebels have to have
rules often to feel that there's
a cause for their acts

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to.  Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So?  Did you learn anything today?"  But not my mother.  "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?"  That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist.

 ~Isidor Isaac Rabi

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

 ~Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They really do it.  It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

 ~Carl Sagan

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.

 ~Charles Peirce

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

 ~Albert Einstein

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.  

 ~Robert K. Merton, Social Theory, 1957

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.

 ~Martin H. Fischer

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.

 ~Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit, 1964

Observations always involve theory.

 ~Edwin Hubble

Science is the topography of ignorance.

 ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Medical Essays, 1883

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it. 

~Alan Valentine

Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. 

Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, 1905

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. 

 ~John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 1929

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. 

 William Lawrence Bragg

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."

 ~Isaac Asimov

"What we need are notions, not notations."

 Carl Friederich Gauss

"You should not define yourself by what you don't do."

 Sage Francis, Last.FM profile

"A friend once told me that I look at the world as if I've never seen it before. I thought, that's a nice compliment... Wait! I never have seen it before! What -- did everyone else get a preview?"

 Ran Prieur, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/joy-in-discover.html

All I want to be,
is someone that makes new things.
And thinks about them.

 John Maeda, http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/SIMPLICITY/archives/000424.html

 When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Often the two occur simultaneously. But I think the underlying cause is usually that they've become demoralized. You rarely hear of a startup that's working around the clock doing deals and pumping out new features, and dies because they can't pay their bills and their ISP unplugs their server.

 Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html

"Nothing is 'mere'." 

 Richard Feynman

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.  

 Winston Churchill

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." 

 Timothy Leary

I have a friend who is even more brash than I am and when anyone asks her for business advice she tells them simply: Well, in the future, your servants are going to rise up and eat you. So, invest in toothpicks.  

 Aaron Swartz, http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/banff

Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over. 

 Seth Godin, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/persistence.html

As responsible purveyors of information and opinion, we are committed to the philosophy that journalism is likewise a public trust, an institution which serves, protects and advances the public welfare.

The Knight newspapers have a deep and abiding faith in our rich heritage of precious freedoms which can be preserved only to the degree that the public is at all times fully informed of the forces which seek to destroy them.

Few things are impossible to diligence, understanding and skill.

Thus we seek to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests. 

 Remarks of John S. Knight, April 1969.

Participatory Culture gives you the platform to hold the market accountable.

 Henry Jenkins, SXSW Interactive 2008 - http://blog.clickz.com/Henry%2BJenkins%2Band%2BSteven%2BJohnson_Keynote.JPG

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

 

 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching

"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. . ."

 Justice Louis Brandeis

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress.  I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." 

 Tom Lantos

"Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly are all now the same freedom."

 Clay Shirky on the big deal behind the internet: http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/events/Misc/2008-02-28_shirky/2008-02-28_shirky.mp4 from a talk on Here Comes Everybody

"Thinking is for doing."

 William James

"Publishing is for acting."

 Clay Shirky, Berkman talk about Here Comes Everybody http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/events/Misc/2008-02-28_shirky/2008-02-28_shirky.mp4

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” 

 Teddy Roosevelt

To save the world you need to become either a hippy or a geek.

 Leo Dirac

We may be at a time where we need geeks to be heroes.

 Larry Lessig on Change Congress

"I have noticed that law follows custom, except when IP is involved."

 Quinn Norton

"The network knows what the nodes do not." 

 Kim Rachmeier, on collective intelligence ( http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/02/radar-roundup-collective-intel.html )

"I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." 

 Fight Club

"One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy."  

 William Faulkner, interview in Writers at Work, 1958

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”  

 Charles Bukowski, Factotum, Black Sparrow Press, 1975

"The market is a perfect, completely apolitical, properly incentivized system for supporting anonymous conversations between people."

Bo Cowgill, re: prediction markets at Google

"I actually – I try to avoid using the word community because it’s misleading in so many ways. It’s misleading in the sense there is no one community; it’s everybody tends to have their own issues that they care about and they may – may or may not have anything to do with another person who’s ostensibly in the same community."

 Linus Torvalds, http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/openvoices/linus-torvalds-part-i/

"But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is actual code and the technology itself and the people who are not willing to step up and write that code, they can comment on it and they can say it should be done this way or that way or they won’t, but in the end their voice doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is code."

 

 Linus Torvalds, http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/openvoices/linus-torvalds-part-i/

"I get the question of “Where should I start?” fairly often and my advice is just don’t even ask that question. It’s more like if you’re not interested enough in one particular area that you already know what you want to try to do, don’t do it. Just let it go and then when you hit something where you say, “I could do this better” and you actually feel motivated enough that you go from saying that to doing that, you will have answered that question yourself."

 Linus Torvalds, on getting started contributing to Linux (from http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/openvoices/linus-torvalds-part-ii/ )

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, via Sherlock Holmes

"No nation can claim to be democratic without citizen participation,"

 Thierry Niandu

"Trying things is cheaper than deciding whether to try them or not." 

 Tom Carden, of Stamen

"Remember paint-by-numbers? We would sit there and fill in the little fucking birds in blue cuz they were like 6 and 6 was blue and the little fucking clouds in white. But then some of us would make up our own color codes. And some of us would just paint whatever the fuck we wanted. And it still looked pretty good."

 Chris Bisignani

"As long as we consume more than we produce we have to let the rest of the world invest in us."

 Warren Buffett

“I am slow to make friends because when I look at people, I have one question in mind; would they hide me?”  

 Warren Buffett quoting a Polish Jew woman forced into a concentration camp with her family but not all of them came out.

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

 Plato

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest.

 George Washington

Then came the "debate." We are a free and open society, after all, so we have "lively" debates. On the one side were the hawks who said, "The Iranians are interfering, we have to bomb them." On the other side were the doves who said, "We cannot be sure the evidence is correct, maybe you misread the serial numbers or maybe it is just the revolutionary guards and not the government."

So we had the usual kind of debate going on, which illustrates a very important and pervasive distinction between several types of propaganda systems. To take the ideal types, exaggerating a little: totalitarian states' propaganda is that you better accept it, or else. And "or else" can be of various consequences, depending on the nature of the state. People can actually believe whatever they want as long as they obey. Democratic societies use a different method: they don't articulate the party line. That's a mistake. What they do is presuppose it, then encourage vigorous debate within the framework of the party line. This serves two purposes. For one thing it gives the impression of a free and open society because, after all, we have lively debate. It also instills a propaganda line that becomes something you presuppose, like the air you breathe.

 

 Noam Chomsky

My own solution [to why those who are disadvantaged, and theoretically are capable of reversing their disadvantage, do not do so] would be that they don't know how to revolt. Not that it has not occurred to them, but that they do not know the tactics to pull it off. 

Jason Priestley

"The 20th century was about sorting out supply, the 21st is going to be about sorting out demand."

 Gavin Potter

'I can do what you do, but you cannot do what I do' 

 Derik Whittaker

"The real evil isn’t the Hitler. The evil is the good German. The evil is all those people who could’ve just picked up the goddamn telephone and stopped it."

 Lawrence Lessig

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”

 Betty Reese

"I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks." 

 Michael Crichton

The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things. 

 Unknown

Nature is alive and is talking to us. this is not a metaphor. 

 Terence McKenna

Curiosity is the first derivative of knowledge.

 Paul Graham, "Great Hackers"

Rather than bringing me closer to others, the time that I spend online isolates me from the most important people in my life, my family, my friends, my neighbourhood, my community.  

 Clifford Stoll

Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.  

 Clifford Stoll

Civilized conduct is a veneer that unaccustomed hardship strips away. 

 From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_otbie-ballard.html by Theodore Dalrymple

Where people have few affective ties but nonetheless live together in close proximity, the potential for conflict is great. 

  From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_otbie-ballard.html by Theodore Dalrymple

Believing in nothing, sated materially, [the educated middle-class] is capable of anything to escape boredom. 

 From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_otbie-ballard.html by Theodore Dalrymple

We have become bored with what we have inherited, to which, for lack of talent, we have contributed so humiliatingly little. 

 From http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_otbie-ballard.html by Theodore Dalrymple