Significance Quotes - Page 15

• A multidisciplinary study group ... estimated that it would be 1980 before developments in artificial intelligence make it possible for machines alone to do much thinking or problem solving of military significance. That would leave, say, five years to develop man-computer symbiosis and 15 years to use it. The 15 may be 10 or 500, but those years should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind.

  J. C. R. Licklider

  Military, Science, Men

  J. C. R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor (1990). “In memoriam, J.C.R. Licklider, 1915-1990”

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• The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations.

  Martin Filler

  Museums, Tasks, Generations

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• The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us.

  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

  Destiny, Losing, Individual

  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1970). “Mies van der Rohe”

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• If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Fate, Destiny

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.254, Penguin

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• What the use of P [the significance level] implies, therefore, is that a hypothesis that may be true may be rejected because it has not predicted observable results that have not occurred.

  Harold Jeffreys

  Science, Use, Levels

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• There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Real, Science, Ideas

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• The word 'living' has so many connotations that I'm almost reluctant to try to define it scientifically because it sounds as if I'm then downgrading all the other significances of that word.

  Francis Collins

  Trying, Sound, Downgrading

  "Francis Collins on Making Life". Interview with Robert Krulwich, www.pbs.org. October 1, 2005.

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• I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures.

  Christiaan Barnard

  Heart, Sleep, Animal

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• Testimony is personal knowledge, based upon the witness of the Holy Ghost, that certain facts of eternal significance are true.

  David A. Bednar

  Personal Knowledge, Facts, Ghost

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• If you ask ... the man in the street ... the human significance of mathematics, the answer of the world will be, that mathematics has given mankind a metrical and computatory art essential to the effective conduct of daily life, that mathematics admits of countless applications in engineering and the natural sciences, and finally that mathematics is a most excellent instrumentality for giving mental discipline... [A mathematician will add] that mathematics is the exact science, the science of exact thought or of rigorous thinking.

  Cassius Jackson Keyser

  Art, Science, Thinking

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• All knowledge attains its ethical value and its human significance only by the human sense with which it is employed. Only a good man can be a great physician.

  Hermann Nothnagel

  Knowledge, Science, Men

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• If 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that 'God exists' is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance.

  A.J. Ayer

  Religion, Atheism, True Or False

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• The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan.

  Henry F. Schaefer, III

  Goal, Design, Joy

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• You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others. Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Spiritual, Forever, Humanity

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• To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance of others, by expressing in the world of forms- truth, love, purity and beauty - this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.

  Meher Baba

  Inspirational, Essence, Games

  Meher Baba (2005). “Infinite Intelligence”

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• If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.

  Honore de Balzac

  Nature, Giving, Enchantment

  Honore de Balzac (2015). “Seraphita: Works of Balzac”, p.29, 谷月社

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• The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.

  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Ideas

  "Lectures on the Method of Academic Study" by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, translated by E. S. Morgan, edited by Norbert Guterman, 1966.

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• If, as I have reason to believe, I have disintegrated the nucleus of the atom, this is of greater significance than the war.

  Ernest Rutherford

  War, Believe, Apology

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• Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Meaningful, Cancer, Waiting Rooms

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.4, Grove Press

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• Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.

  Clifford Geertz

  Believe, Hero, Animal

  Clifford Geertz (1973). “The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays”, p.5, Basic Books

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• Of what significance are the things you can forget.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memories, Silly, Forget

  Henry David Thoreau, Horace Elisha Scudder, Harrison Gray Otis Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1803). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau”, p.428

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• When vitality runs high, death takes men by surprise. But if they close their eyes to this possibility, what they gain in peace they lose in sensibility and significance.

  Lewis Mumford

  Running, Peace, Eye

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• Something of eternal significance transpired there.
  Not only was the calendar of the world changed,
  but heaven itself and eternity were affected.

  J. Vernon McGee

  Christmas, Heaven, Calendars

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• You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.

  John Edward Williams

  Military, War, Race

  John Edward Williams (1965). “Stoner: A Novel”

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• I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Christian, Blood, Enemy

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