Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.
What [Donald] has put up for question is this idea of tariffs. Initially, he said if China won't stop taking advantage of us and manipulating their currency, then I will put tariffs in place. That spooked everybody because if you charge China a fee and an extra tariff for anything they bring into the United States, what's going to happen is that companies carrying those goods are going to raise prices. It's going to be expensive for people. People got scared of that, but then he walked that [idea] back. I don't think anybody is expecting heavy tariffs on anything.
To go too much another way, for the sake of my ego in wanting to create something... in the situation of Superman is just wrong. Especially since we're continuing, in a sense, that story. The characters have to feel somewhat similar. What are you going to do with Superman? The world, and all the people that have created it, created him and have all kind of come together to make this image. Everybody kind of has the same idea of what it should be. So for me to go, "Okay, no, I think he should have a southern accent." Or something crazy, just doesn't make any sense.
There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular - a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.
I've been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech-if not all human speech-is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder-they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in. The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.
The American administration obviously has supported the dictators in the Muslim countries and the Muslims are rising, as you can see their boiling in Libya and Egypt and many other countries and they're rising up against the oppression and the Americans should stay away from trying to, if you like, put another dictator in place, and I don't think the American interest in the current time in the Middle East with their presence, rather they should withdraw their forces, they should withdraw their own personnel, this is a very insecure time for the Americans I think.
There are many actresses that are working longer, because until you change the playing field and make it economically stronger for women, it's very difficult to say no to somebody when that's your only gig. If you're a producer, or if you have more power, you're going to be in a position to know that if you burn that bridge, there'll still be this bridge open. But still - when people ask me 'do you think your politics have decreased your chances of working, I say: 'In Hollywood, most of the prejudice has to do with if you're old or fat.' Power can't forgive that".
In the case of Donald Trump I think you've got to accept that a lot of what's going on in political discourse is based upon judgement. How the economy works - how people work - what will come to pass - what will not come to pass - what is possible - what is not possible. There is this whole modal dimension. There's a lot in politics that is making a judgement about what might be and can be and would be. Trump frightens a lot of people but there is a bizarre possible world in which it turns out as he's vindicated, though most of us think the evidence is against it.
The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a Savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.
I think that an anthill is better than a nest ... that in the anthill among a hundred thousand or a million you are freer than in a nest, where all sit around and look at one another, waiting until scientists finally discover ways to make us mind readers. ... the psychology of the nest is loathsome to me, and I always sympathize with one who flees his nest, even if he flees into an anthill, where it may be crowded but one can find solitude - that most natural, most worthy state of man, that precious and intense state of being conscious of the world and of oneself.
I think that all women are witches, in the sense that a witch is a magical being. And a wizard, which is a male version of a witch, is kind of revered, and people respect wizards. But a witch, my god, we have to burn them. It's the male chauvinistic society that we're living in for the longest time, 3,000 years or whatever. And so I just wanted to point out the fact that men and women are magical beings. We are very blessed that way, so I'm just bringing that out. Don't be scared of witches, because we are good witches, and you should appreciate our magical power.
The more science learns, the clearer it is that although we are here, we shouldn't be. Once we begin considering the details of it all, the towering odds against our existence begin to become a bit unsettling. When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing.
I began to think of war, even so-called "good wars" like World War II, as corrupting everybody. Violence begetting violence. The good guys beginning to act like the bad guys. And when I studied the history of wars, it seemed to me that that was the case. Athens vs. Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians presumably the democratic state. The Spartans the totalitarian state. But as the war went on, the Athenians began to act like the Spartans. They began committing atrocities and cruelties. So I saw this as a characteristic of war, even so-called "good wars."
This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams' account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them.
I think I'm better wired for television. I love variety as far as a project. I'm easily bored and the schedule of a television show, it just keeps you going. I love theater and I think doing a sitcom in front of a live audience is the closest you can get to theater, and it's really the best mix of like standup and theater, is really a sitcom. I started as a standup and I still continue to do that as well, so I think I'm just a TV guy and happy for it. I think my movie career is kind of like my social life, I'm picky and not in demand. So it perhaps is working out.
Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper. I didn’t want to write these pages until there were no hard feelings, no sharp ones. I do not have that luxury. I am sad and angry and I want everyone to be alive again. I want more landmarks, less landmines. I want to be grateful but I’m having a hard time with it.
But you're dead," said Harry. "Oh yes," said Dumbledore matter-of-factly. "Then...I'm dead too?" "Ah," said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. "That is the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.” They looked at each other, the old man still beaming. "Not?" repeated Harry. "Not," said Dumbledore. "But…" Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. "But I should have died—I didn't defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!" "And that," said Dumbledore, "will, I think, have made all the difference.
It is best if we do not listen to or look at the person whom we consider to be the cause of our anger. Like a fireman, we have to pour water on the blaze first and not waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire. "Breathing in, I know that I am angry. Breathing out, I know that I must put all my energy into caring for my anger." So we avoid thinking about the other person, and we refrain from doing or saying anything as long as our anger persists. If we put all our mind into observing our anger, we will avoid doing any damage that we may regret later.
Some men don't want their women to speak up, and then other men are attracted to that very thing. But as a woman, you don't want to be just window dressing. I've probably been unattractive to some men because I do say what I feel and what I think. You can be political about it, but I don't have a red flag. I don't have a mechanism in my head that prevents me from saying what I think, or if something upsets me or if I feel like I'm being degraded. I come from a family of very outspoken women. I can't imagine living in a time when you couldn't express what you felt.
Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation - e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of nondemonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hyputheses on the basis of a certain body of data.
Aesthetic racism is almost always a sign of inexperience. Those who have not made their way far enough into the world of amorous delights judge women only by what can be seen. But those who really know women understand that the eye reveals only a minute fraction of what a woman can offer us. When God bade mankind be fruitful and multiply, Doctor, He was thinking of the ugly as well as of the beautiful. I am convinced I might add, that the aesthetic criterion does not come from God but from the devil. In paradise no distinction was made between ugliness and beauty.
Another factor is the education and culture in which you grow up. I didn't grow up in the culture of victory, where you are expected to be or have to be, the best. It was not at all like that in my family. Tennis was really a hobby. If it led to something, great. If not, there were other things in life. I think that was something I was missing at some points in my career, because when I see Hingis or the Williamses, you see how they were educated for this: to win, to be the best, a bit the American mentality. Number one. Number one. Number one. I didn't have this.
It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear.
These artists all have some kind of message to the public. These messages can be quite personal, maybe about their own existential situation, and it can be about suffering, it can be about questioning of one's existence and so on. They are all telling us very genuine stories, which are touching us in different ways and they are enlightening in different ways. But it's not only the stories themselves, but it's how it is done - that creates the impact of the story. It is not what is said but how it is said. I don't think you can dissociate the content from the form.
What you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought.It is an awfully lonesome business, and, as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all, I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.
Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting one's whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or to preparing oneself and others for the work of murder.
And yet, within her anxiety, secured there like a gemstone, she carries the cool and curious power of occasionally being able to see the world vividly. Clarity bursts upon her a spray of little stars. She understands this, and thinks of it as one of the tricks of consciousness; there is something almost luxurious about it.. The narrative maze opens and permits her to pass through. She may be crowded out of her own life - she knows this for a fact and has always know it - but she possesses, as a compensatory gift, the startling ability to draft alternative versions.
I mean, I've never been thinking that if you're a fan you have to buy everything that somebody puts out. I mean, you've got a choice. If you don't want it, just don't buy it. It's also a reaction to YouTube and sharing of files. A lot of it is really bad sound, really low quality. So the librarian in me wants it at least to exist there so that in 20 years when I'm sitting in my rocking chair, it will still exist in the best sound quality possible, even though it only sold 1000 units or whatever. As much as I love the whole pirate kind of thing, the quality suffers.
The way Spain has now behaved in Catalonia, after the referendum, is a total disgrace. If this continues, it will all reach the point of no return. You cannot start sexually harassing women and then break their fingers, one by one, because they want to have their own state. You cannot injure hundreds of innocent people, who simply don't want to be governed from Madrid. That's absurd and thoroughly sick! Spain used to commit holocausts all over what is now called Latin America, so it is 'in their blood'. But I don't think Catalans will allow this to be done to them.
There's a lot of people that I disagree with that I think I could have interesting conversations with. What I don't want to get into is manufactured conflict. I would much rather talk to someone like Dr. Rhonda Patrick or Randall Carlson and be mesmerized by information. I guess in a way that's selfish, or maybe not objective of me. The older (and hopefully wiser) I get the less interested I am in conflict. I don't mind disagreeing with people in a civil way, but I definitely don't want to go out of my way to have an argument unless it's a really important subject.
Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experimental barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it. Just as correct principles, when applied, carry their own witness that they are true, so do correct personal improvement programs. But we must not expect personal improvement without pain or some 'remodeling.' We can't expect to have the thrills of revealed religion without the theology. We cannot expect to have the soul stretching without Christian service.
What we're doing now, is to try to eradicate the limited notion of how people are interacting with each other through hyper-racialized ideas. A lot of it deal with, as an example, genre. If I ask you to visualize a trap musician or a hip-hop musician, you'll see one thing. If I say visualize a western classical musician, you'll see a very different thing. A lot of how music is disseminated to us is hyper-racialized. It's not something that we think about all the time, but if you take a minute to look back, it's why you get this argument when there's a white rapper.
When I think about what I'm going through, as President, it doesn't compare to what the folks that I'm representing are going through. They're losing jobs. They're trying to figure out how to pay their medical bills. They've seen retirements suddenly dissipate because of what's happening in the stock market. And so as tough as the job might be, and the politics of Washington can sometimes be I'm always reminded of how fortunate I am to be here, and what an extraordinary responsibility I have to try to deliver on some of the promises that I made during the election.
Here is my challenge. Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.
I don't think it's very healthy to hold people to idealized views. I think that's a certain stage in life, something kids do. You have to go through that idealistic phase with your parents, but at a certain point, you need to see people as just people. And everyone's pretty similar. I think if you're in the showbusiness, like any high-stakes business, the highs and lows can make you a manic-depressive person, if you weren't that way to start with. 'Cause it's just so crazy on your psyche. A lot of it has to do with people thinking they're greater than someone else.
I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make. Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up…it’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges- a world you feel at home in.
Talking about creating truth tends to alarm people, because truth is meant to be 'just out there'. It doesn't take much thinking to appreciate that we sometimes change truths on the ground - sometimes just by words. A new law will change what is possible. I think - perhaps because the paradigm we follow tends to be scientific, and all about discovery - the creative element of truth is one upon which we don't focus so much attention. This is particularly so in anglophone philosophy, perhaps because we associate it too much with those 'pernicious' continental trends.
Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.
In London I'm out and about all the time. I walk everywhere, so people do recognise me and they've probably seen me before so they're not bothered anymore. But I think that's a good thing because if you try and remain mysterious people are surprised when they see you. With me, I think they're just bored of seeing me - but that suits me just fine because I like to live as much of a normal life as I can. That's why I love living in London. People are very respectful of your privacy. If they see you having a coffee in a coffee shop, they're not going to interrupt you.
If we are perceived by the rest of the world as employing a double standard in the way that we pursue the war on terror, if we are seen as imposing on other countries' nationals, burdens that we wouldn't be able to tolerate ourselves, then we sacrifice the legitimacy of the enterprise. And I don't think the world considers it illegitimate for the United States to seek to protect itself from another attack like the one we suffered on 9/11, but I think the world does think it is illegitimate to do so by sacrificing their citizens' rights and not our citizens' rights.
If you're going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in the work that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience. That's why it's not like a table or a car or something. I think that that might even be hard for people because most of our visual experiences are of tables. It has no business being anything else but a table. But a painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between itself, what it is, and what it is not-you know, the very thing. And how the artist engineers or manages that is the question.
I've seen the end of the universe, and it happens to be in the United States and, oddly enough, it's in Houston, Texas. I know - I was shocked, too. Imagine my surprise when I left a comedy club one day and walked to the end of the block, and there on one corner was a Starbucks, and across the street from that Starbucks, in the exact same building as that Starbucks, there was - a Starbucks. I looked back and forth, thinking the sun was playing tricks with my eyes. That there was a Starbucks across from a Starbucks - and that, my friends, is the end of the universe.
Anyone can do shock value. Develop enough tension and cue the music right, then have something jump out: It's almost impossible not to jump in your seat. But that doesn't leave any effect on you when you leave the movie theater. To me, the best horror is psychological horror. The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, things that kind of stick with you long after you've seen them. It's what you don't see. It's letting the audience think a little bit, not spelling it out for them. Giving them credit for using their own imaginations rather than sticking in gags and tricks.
Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.
Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.
Trump conducts meetings and actually tries to get something done rather than just have the meeting and rather than just announce a framework and rather than just touch on bullet points or outline points and to speak in large terms about what our four-year objectives are. My guess is that Trump gets in there, rolls up the sleeves, and starts talking about actual work that's going to be done, things that he wants to do, things he believes the American people elected him to do. And I think it probably is a stark contrast for people who basically work in a bureaucracy.
There is behavioral ecology, which looks closely at the difference different ecologies make to behavior and other features of animals and humans. There's evolutionary individual psychology, there's evolutionary social psychology. In Darwin's terms, evolution couldn't exist without variation, and variation is important in behavioral genetics. And so on, and so on. There are so many instances in which evolution actually sharpens the precision, I think, with which one can find out the importance of differences. We're interested in differences as well as commonalities.
There's going to be biological differences between the genders. There's going to be biological differences between two women or two men. There's biological differences between all of us. My concern is, why are we so concerned about it? Why are we so worried about it? Why, whenever a study comes out about men do this one way and women do this one way, or men's brains and women's brains - why are we so interested in that? You know, what makes us so fascinated by differences between the sexes? And I think more often than not that interest is deeply embedded in sexism.
We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.
A quarter-horse jockey learns to think of a twenty-second race as if it were occurring across twenty minutes--in distinct parts, spaced in his consciousness. Each nuance of the ride comes to him as he builds his race. If you can do the opposite with deep time, living in it and thinking in it until the large numbers settle into place, you can sense how swiftly the initial earth packed itself together, how swiftly continents have assembled and come apart, how far and rapidly continents travel, how quickly mountains rise and how quickly they disintegrate and disappear.