Events Quotes - Page 37

• It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.

  Andre Maurois

  Happiness, Mind, Quality

  "The Art of Happiness". Book by Andre Maurois, 1971.

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• Science fiction that's just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun.

  Douglas Adams

  Fun, Gun, Simple

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• All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.

  Doris Lessing

  Wicked, Ecclesiastes, Clean

  Doris Lessing (1999). “Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher”, p.30, Canongate Books

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• Everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone's list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last.

  Stephen Hawking

  War, Creating, Would Be

  "Stephen Hawking: 'Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence - but are we taking AI seriously enough?'". www.independent.co.uk. May 1, 2014.

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• The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.

  Ken Kesey

  Past, Long, Silence

  Ken Kesey (2006). “Sometimes a Great Notion”, p.485, Penguin

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• There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible:;: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.

  Charles Babbage

  Miracle, Doe, May

  Charles Babbage (1864). “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher”, p.476, London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green

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• Our initial sensory data are always "first derivatives," statements about differences which exist among external objects or statements about changes which occur either in them or in our relationship to them. Objects and circumstances which remain absolutely constant relative to the observer, unchanged either by his own movement or by external events, are in general difficult and perhaps always impossible to perceive. What we perceive easily is difference and change and difference is a relationship.

  Gregory Bateson

  Data, Differences, Movement

  Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson (2006). “Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry”, p.173, Transaction Publishers

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• I do not invent characters. There they are. That's who they are. That's their nature. They talk and they behave the way they want to behave. I don't have a character behaving one way, then a point comes in the play where the person has to either stay or leave. If I had it plotted that the person leaves, then the person leaves. If that's what the person wants to do. I let the person do what the person wants or has to do at the time of the event.

  Edward Albee

  Character, Play, Want

  The Believer Interview, www.believermag.com. September 2013.

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• There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Pain, Men, Long

  Thomas Hobbes (2016). “The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition”, p.196, Hackett Publishing

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• I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.

  Phil Ochs

  Song, Philosophical, Writing

  Phil Ochs' testimony at the Chicago Seven trial, December 11, 1969.

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• Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.

  Karl Popper

  Men, Interesting, Would Be

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.150, Routledge

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• Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another's work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.

  Peter Medawar

  Appreciation, Discovery, Giving

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.32, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.

  Peter Medawar

  Thinking, Law, Information

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• The fact that laws were given to man, both affirmative and negative, supports the principle, that God's knowledge of future events does not change their character. The great doubt that presents itself to our mind is the result of the insufficiency of our intellect.

  Maimonides

  Character, Men, Law

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1116, Moses Maimonides

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• Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Historical, World, Costumes

  "Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1997.

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• The brilliant creative core of capitalism ... is the story the entrepreneurs and capital investors tell themselves about the future. How they intend to alter it, what they expect to gain in return, where they will raise the capital to accomplish their vision. Many of their stories turn out to be flawed or mistaken, of course, but the capacity to envision a set of future events and then act to fulfill them is a central source of capitalism's strength and its dominance of society.

  William Greider

  Entrepreneur, Creative, Vision

  William Greider (2003). “The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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• Prophecy is rash, but it may be that the publication of D.T. Suzuki's first Essays in Zen Buddhism in 1927 will seem to future generations as great an intellectual event as William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century or Marsiglio Ficino's of Plato in the fifteenth.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Plato, Latin, Buddhism

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• The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events - some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled.

  Howard Zinn

  Thinking, Order, White

  "You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train". Book by Howard Zinn (Chapter 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia), 1994.

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• David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.

  Howard Zinn

  Rays, Done, Research

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• Whether sociology can ever become a full-fledged "science" (a description of a class of events predictable on the basis of deductions from a constant rationale) depends on whether the terms which sociologists employ to describe events can be analyzed into quantifiable observables.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Class, Sociology, Description

  "The bulletin of mathematical biophysics" by Anatol Rapoport, (p. 183), 1949.

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• The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

  Irving Kristol

  Political, Socialism, Century

  "Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea". Book by Irving Kristol, September 20, 1995.

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• Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.

  Tanith Lee

  Men, Pressure, Causes

  Tanith Lee (1996). “The Gods are Thirsty”, Overlook Books

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• I am like a child ready for the apocalypse, I am the apocalypse itself, that is to say, the ultimate and first event of the end, the unveiling and the verdict.

  Jacques Derrida

  Children, Unveiling, Firsts

  Jacques Derrida (2009). “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, p.28, Fordham Univ Press

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• Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good. The gratitude of the nation to the sovereign arbiter of all human events should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy. Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.

  James K. Polk

  Country, Gratitude, Blessing

  James K. Polk (2009). “Messages and Papers of the Presidents: James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and Franklin Pierce”, p.2479, Wildside Press LLC

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• At any given moment in your life, you have the choice between love and fear. And that's a choice you make. You make the choice of how you react to events.

  Jennifer Beals

  Choices, Moments, Given

  Windy City Queercast Interview, www.windycityqueercast.com. February 05, 2011.

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