Modification Quotes - Page 2

• I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification.

  Lady Gaga

  Love, Life, Happiness

  "Lady Gaga: Plastic Surgery Is ‘Promoting Insecurity", www.huffingtonpost.com. April 13, 2011.

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• If you want to build a recursively self-improving AI, have it go through a billion sequential self-modifications, become vastly smarter than you, and not die, you've got to work to a pretty precise standard.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Self, Want, Standards

  "Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers". Question 12, lesswrong.com. January 07, 2010.

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• The study of Buddhism is essentially the study of modification, how we modify the state of mind we're in, how we modify the realm we're in.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Mind, Study

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• There are two sorts of beauty; one is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover.

  Paul Gauguin

  Art, Two, Trying

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• As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, ... that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.

  Joseph Priestley

  Character, Government, Atheism

  "A History of the Corruptions of Christianity". Book by Joseph Priestley, Part II: Opinions Relating to the Doctrine of Atonement, Introduction, 1782.

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• Looking back now on the whole sexual scene we can see that our species has remained much more loyal to its basic biological urges than we might at first imagine. Its primate sexual system with carnivore modifications has survived all the fantastic technological advances remarkably well.

  Desmond Morris

  Sex, Loyal, Might

  Desmond Morris (1986). “The illustrated naked ape: a zoologist's study of the human animal”, Crown Pub

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• Last year I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality among Animals" ... Today I am going to speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality among Critics" ... The subject is much the same, with some modifications, of course.

  Erik Satie

  Animal, Years, Today

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• If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Leaving, Civil War

  Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862

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• ...for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power.  It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.  In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future.  With God all is Now.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Lying, Law, Insanity

  Edgar Allan Poe (2004). “The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.60, Wordsworth Editions

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• The human mind has a superglue-like quality: Once a viewpoint has been plucked from the swirling chaos of beliefs and explanations, then the mind quickly solidifies that view, resisting any future modification.

  Charles Hugh Smith

  Views, Mind, Quality

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• Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps.

  Charles Darwin

  Variation, Steps, Natural

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.3702, Delphi Classics

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• And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. All attempts of this kind have hitherto proved fruitless, and seem to have proceeded entirely from that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Simplicity, Words Of Wisdom

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.402

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• Since the idea that modification of synaptic function can provide a basis for memory arose shortly after the first anatomical description of the synapse a number of models (Hebb 1949 . . Hayek 1952 . . Kendel 1981) have been proposed in which various cognitive activities are represented by combinations of the firing patterns of individual neurons.

  Gerald Edelman

  Memories, Ideas, Numbers

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• Are not all Hypotheses erroneous, in which Light is supposed to consist in Pression or Motion, propagated through a fluid Medium? For in all these Hypotheses the Phaenomena of Light have been hitherto explain'd by supposing that they arise from new Modifications of the Rays; which is an erroneous Supposition.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Light, Supposing That

  Isaac Newton (2007). “Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light”, p.362, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Hebb place the Law of Effect at the synaptic level by proposing a correlation model of synaptic modification similar to that of Hayek (1952). This work was seminal in providing a basis for many subsequent theoretical studies . .

  Gerald Edelman

  Law, Levels, Study

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• Development requires modification and transformation of the environment... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.

  Malcolm Fraser

  People, Support, Needs

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• Focused intensity is required to win. I can't stress enough that people who took control of their finances and worked their way out of debt got mad. They got sick and tired of being sick and tired! They said, "I've had it!" and went ballistic to change their lives. There is no intellectual exercise where you can academically work your way into wealth; you have to get fired up - There is no energy in logic; this is behavior and motivation modification, and it works.

  David Ramsey

  Inspirational, Motivation, Stress

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• Technology will make available to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised.....techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Technology, Weather, Leader

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• We cannot change the Koran or make no modifications, this cannot be done, or it would no longer be holy.

  Muhammad Ali

  Done, Holy

  Source: thefederalist.com

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• The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.

  William James

  Philosophy, Law, Medicine

  William James (1950). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.5, Courier Corporation

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• Grand telegraphic discovery today … Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time ... With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish … the “timbre” of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Discovery, Today, Firsts

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• The modification of prejudice takes a long time, and occurs as the result of a thousand things that happen to the prejudiced person - things he sees and hears and reads, people he talks to, and places he visits. Any given reformer must be content to take a small and obscure place in a chain of cumulative pressures.

  Margaret Halsey

  Long, People, Prejudice

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

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• God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.
  Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.

  Baruch Spinoza

  God, Essence, Causes

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• A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.

  Lawrence Joseph Henderson

  Knowledge, Men, Differences

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• No longer is the body a temple to be worshipped as the house of God; it has become a commodified and regulated object that must be strictly monitored by its owner to prevent lapses into health-threatening behaviors as identified by risk discourse. For those with the socioeconomic resources to indulge in risk modification, this discourse may supply the advantages of a new religion; for others, this discourse has the potential to create anxiety and guilt, to promote hopelessness and fear of the future.

  Deborah Lupton

  Indulge In, House, Anxiety

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