Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next-door is all the American male could wish for -- unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship.
To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless -- a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules and subvert them thereby -- that should be our goal.
"In Search of a University", The University Game
One such utopian dream was Charles Ives's Universe Symphony. This was a work with hundreds or thousands of participants, spread out across the valleys, on hillsides and on mountaintops. It was to be so gigantic, so inclusive that no single individual could ever assume mastery or control of it. Anyone who wished to do so could add to it. It was only an idea then, but one which excites our imagination enormously. To imagine ourselves as participants in a Universe Symphony is to give more critical attention to our performance than is the case if we merely consider ourselves to be in a dumpyard. We analyze and criticize the music better; we recognize the soloists, the conductors, the prima donnas; we listen to the talents and faults of each.
The Tuning of the World
Andy and Flo live in the past, and when faced with something they don't like or understand, they do the sensible thing -- ignore it.
At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.
I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.
Many businessmen fail to understand Python principles -- the ultimate absurdity was an offer from America to buy the "format" of the Python shows, that is, Monty Python without the Pythons -- corporate methods do not have the conceptual framework to deal with an anarchist collective, run by intelligent and arrogant comedians who have proved that their method works.
Monty Python: The Case Against
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
His [Alan Turing's] high-pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
Alan Turing: The Enigma
The FDA has so many rules that can be gotten around that the consumer has no protection at all. You never know what you're eating. I'm horrified when I discover the nature of ingredients in consumer products as a result of my scientific work.
In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment.
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.
Do you know about the Eleventh Commandment? It says, "Thou shalt not bore God, or he will destroy your universe."
The most important art in the last fifty years in this country is boring art. What is important about John Cage or Jackson Pollock is it's boring.
Quoted in A World Of Ideas II
Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison -- a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.
In our impatience to test our ideological wings, too many students are trying to fly before they even know what feathers are; too many students use half-baked versions of some cultural theory they overheard in the cafeteria line-up as a valid justification for their actions. Like Newman's ideal student, we too learn as we go along -- only now students use an idea like a weapon, to intimidate and destroy, instead of as one tool in a constructive tool box. How often have students, speaking in class, either justified themselves or cudgelled some rival into silence and submission by evoking a great name or theory?
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
... one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin where it belongs.
"Politics and the English Language"
The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
The real danger from advertising is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions: the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of man.
Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
"Of Death"
Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
It constantly confounds me that not only the young, but also many certified intellectuals accept uncritically the superiority of spontaneous or unconscious products of mind over those subjected to conscious, rational control.
In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Bach fugue, or any other great work of art.
It may be objected by some that I have concentrated too much on the dry bones, and too little on the flesh which clothes them, but I would ask such critics to concede at least that the bones have an austere beauty of their own.
Classical Thermodynamics