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servumtuum · 09-11-09, 06:04 PM

I ran across this in the Science and Technology post called The Science of Serendipity dated 9-11-2009. It says more in a paragraph than I could have in a page of writing.

Quote:

Many serendipitous discoveries aren't just unexpected, they're actively opposite to what you want to happen. That's why they're breakthroughs - and it's also why 90% of human endeavours from office work to politics never have them. If you automatically erase or avoid anything that upsets your expectations you'll never advance, which is why scientists should always look at the unlikely or unwanted and ask "Now why did that happen?" Instead of insisting it didn't.

Henry · 10-06-09, 10:35 PM

It's been awhile since I came across a quote worth ... um ... quoting.

Quote:

We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles, the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

- E.B. White, The New Yorker, 1943

Boone · 10-06-09, 10:44 PM

That's awesome Henry (and E.B.

)

Hadn't read that previously - what a treat...

servumtuum · 01-10-10, 03:56 PM

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet
voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow".
Mary Anne Radmacher

Bishop · 01-26-10, 02:53 PM

"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hood-winked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

-Robert A. Heinlein, "If This Goes On—", 1940

JM · 02-12-10, 01:43 AM

In honor of the upcoming weekend...are we allowed to be smaltzy here? Hey, Dr. Seuss is the man....

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

Dr. Seuss

servumtuum · 02-16-10, 02:48 PM

A few from one of my favorite commentators on humanity and it's activities-H.L. Mencken.

-The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic-

-Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. A man really learns little by it, for it is narrowly limited in range. What does a faithful husband know of women, or a faithful wife of men? The generalizations of such persons are always inaccurate. What really teaches man is not experiences, but observation. It is observation that enables him to make use of the vastly greater experience of other men, of men taken in the mass. He learns by noting what happens to them. Confined to what happens to himself, he labors eternally under an insufficiency of data.-

-The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked-

-All professional philosophers tend to assume that common sense means the mental habit of the common man. Nothing could be further from the mark. The common man is chiefly to be distinguished by his plentiful lack of common sense: he believes things on evidence that is too scanty, or that distorts the plain facts, or that is full of non sequiturs. Common sense really involves making full use of all the demonstrable evidence—and of nothing but the demonstrable evidence-

-It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.-

-It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office-

Bishop · 02-17-10, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by servumtuum

H.L. Mencken.

-The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic-

Um...doesn't that mean every politician and president we've ever had and ever will have is a man whose ideas are idiotic?

Om · 02-17-10, 04:15 PM

Can't truthfully say it's a "favorite" because I just ran across it today ... but dammit I think it may become one.

Today's Multiple Choice Thought

There is no place where a loving touch so completely compensates for an unskilled hand as in:

a. the bedroom
b. the nursery
c. the garden
d. all of the above.

I guess, when you get down to it, a loving touch compensates for an unskilled hand about everywhere except in an airplane cockpit.

~Robert Brault

servumtuum · 02-17-10, 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bishop

Um...doesn't that mean every politician and president we've ever had and ever will have is a man whose ideas are idiotic?

Your reply interested me, Bish, because I hadn't thought of it that way-which spurred me into a dig for how others may have interpreted it and came across this statement which comes pretty close to how I took that particular quote.

Quote:

This insight is among my very favorites. Being sensible, sensible ideas seldom must be imposed by force. Sometimes sensible ideas are implemented gradually, as practices with widespread advantages displace less-advantageous practices and become part of customary behavior. Sometimes sensible ideas are adopted consciously and quickly, through the art of persuasion or the rigors of scientific demonstration.

In contrast, idiotic ideas have nothing going for them. Most people who voluntarily adopt idiotic ideas soon abandon them if these ideas hamper the ability to thrive in the real world. The only way to implement an idiotic idea widely and surely is through force.

Link to article where I found this.Mencken’s Wisdom | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

Bishop · 02-18-10, 11:48 PM

Serv,

That's a nice thought about "sensible ideas" but I see it happening less and less frequently. In fact, just the opposite seems to be occurring.

It would be sensible not to text and drive, but it seems that won't stop until someone imposes it by force. It would be sensible to take responsibility for your own actions, but the current state of lawsuits in this country indicates that's not happening. Not only are idiotic ideas being regularly implemented by force, but even the sensible ones don't get off the ground unless they are mandated.

As I'm fond of saying, "Common sense is not that common."

servumtuum · 02-20-10, 10:35 AM

Bish, Mencken wrote during the 1920s to the early 1950s-back when the dissemination of information, or misinformation or dis-information was not as...easy...as it is now. Plus, I would refer you to the Vocabulary Development thread in the Present Tense forum for possible leads into why things seem to have deteriorated in recent decades.

JM · 03-02-10, 12:19 PM

Even though today is Dr. Suess' BIRTHDAY...I already put a favorite quote of his...so I offer this:

"Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life. "
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

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