Quotes

     "When one is commanded to love with the mind, then not to think
must surely be sin." 

			     - Charles Templeton, ACT OF GOD

     "Success in science depends not only on rational argument but on a
mixture of subterfuge, rhetoric and propaganda." 


			     - P. K. Feyerabend

     "In other cases, upon transfusion, recipients went into severe
shock and many died; in these cases, the donor and the recipient were 
obviously incompatible."

			     - Snyder et. al. GENERAL GENETICS (p. 473)

     "'... I am flattered to learn that you have heard most favorable
comment upon a paper of mine on the Chinese language. However, I regret
to say that I have not written any such paper.'" 

			     E. Sapir (Quoted in LANGUAGE, Vol. 62,,
					No. 1, p. 187)

THE FOUR STAGES OF PUBLIC OPINION

1.  (Just after publication)
	The Novelty is absurd and subversive of Religion & Morality.
	The propounder is both fool a& knave.

2.  (Twenty years later)
	The Novelty is Absolute Truth and will yield a full and
	satisfactory explanation of things in general - The propounder
	man of sublime genius & perfect virtue.

3.  (Forty years later)
	The Novelty won't explain things in general after all and
	therefore is a wretched failure. The propounder is a very
	ordinary person advertised by a clique.

4.  (A century later)
	The Novelty is a mixture of truth & error. Explains as much as
	could reasonably be expected. The propounder worthy of all
	honour in spite of his share of human frailties, as one who has
	added to the permanent possessions of science.

				- Thomas Huxley, NOTES, 1873
				 (From IN THE BEGINNING, Brian M. Fagan)

     "Admire experts for their knowledge and creativity; milk them of
what they can tell you; and pity them for their narrow-mindedness."


				- Nigel Calder

     "Well, yes; he could have done all that, but it is not proved: I
am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are
honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so
definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of
unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side.
Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigor of the order
I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling
of doing a work of pure imagination. And I am certain that the
characters in a novel would have a more genuine appearance or, in any
case, would be more agreeable." 

				- Jean-Paul Sartre, NAUSEA.

     "Them funky dinosaurs just done give it up." 

				- James Brown

     "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." 


     " ... great progress ... comes from a satisfactory philosophy
of ignorance ... " 


     "Nature only uses the largest threads to weave her pattern, so
each small piece of the fabric reveals the organization of the entire
tapestry." 


				- Richard P. Feynman

     "Mere power and mere knowledge exalt human nature but do not bless
it. We must gather from the whole store of things such as make most for
the uses of life." 


     "It is not the pleasure of curiousity ... nor the raising of the
spirit, nor the victory of wit, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of
honor or fame, nor inablement for business, that are the true ends of
knowledge. [Rather it is] a restitution and reinvesting of man to the
sovereignty and power which he had in the first state of creation."
 

     "There is no Excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in
the Proportion." 

				- Francis Bacon

     "I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities
of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly
from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity
drew us to our studies in the first place. 

     That is not to say that we should cease to establish facts and to
verify our information, but merely to suggest that unless these facts
can be imbued with the flash of poetic insight then they remain dull
gems; semi-precious stones scarcely worth collecting". 

				- Daniel Dreiberg, BLOOD FROM THE
				   SHOULDER OF PALLAS (In Alan
				   Moore, WATCHMEN).

     "If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"


				- Alan Moore, BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE

     "I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the
people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."


				- Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

     "Our ability to represent and simulate reality implies that we can
appropriate the order of existence and bring it to serve human purposes.
A good simulation, be it a religious myth or a scientific theory, gives
us a sense of mastery over our experience. To represent something
symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it,
thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the
realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in
creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our
grand illusion." 

				- Heinz Pagels, THE DREAMS OF REASON


     "If thou wilt not fight thy battle of life because in selfishness
thou art afraid of the battle, thy resolution is in vain: nature will
compel thee. 


     Because thou art in the bondage of Karma, of the forces of thine 
own past life; and that which thou, in thy delusion, with a good will 
dost not want to do, unwillingly thou shalt have to do. 


     God dwells in the heart of all things, Arjuna: thy God dwells in
thy heart. And his power of wonder moves all things -- puppets in a play
of shadows -- whirling them onwards on the stream of time. 


     Go to him for thy salvation with all thy soul, victorious man. By
his grace thou shalt obtain the peace supreme, thy home of Eternity.



     I have given thee words of vision and wisdom more secret than 
hidden mysteries. Ponder them in the silence of thy soul, and then in
freedom do thy will." 

				- BHAGAVAD GITA 18:59-63
				  (Translated by Juan Mascaro)


		On this level of sand, 

		Between the sea and land, 

		What shall I build or write 

		Against the fall of night? 



     O dear children, look in what dungeon we are lying, in what lodging
we are, for we have been captured by the spirit of the outward world; it
is our life, for it nourishes and brings us up, it rules in our marrow 
and bones, in our flesh and blood, it has made our flesh earthly, and 
now death has us. 

				- Jacob Boehme

     We take our first step in words each day, and instantly fall into a
hole in the sounds we make. 

				- Robert Bly, 
				  "Falling into Holes in Our Sentences"

     Through the way the prose poem absorbs detail, it helps to heal the
wound of abstraction. 

				- Robert Bly, "About the Author",
				  THIS BODY IS MADE OF CAMPHOR AND
				  GOPHERWOOD

     The most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens. 

				- Old Irish tale


     When men cannot observe, they don't have ideas; they have 
obsessions. 


     The quality of a faith is not a constant; it depends on the quality
of the men who profess it. 

				- V. S. Naipaul

     I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking
 paths.
				- Jorge Luis Borges, 
			          "The Garden of Forking Paths"

     "How does it sound to you?"
     "Possible, but not interesting," Lo:nnot answered. "You'll reply
that reality hasn't the least obligation to be interesting. And I'll
answer you that reality may avoid this obligation but that hypotheses
may not."
				- Jorge Luis Borges, 
				  "Death and the Compass"

     We ... have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it as firm,
mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in
its architecture we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices of
unreason which tell us it is false.
				- Jorge Luis Borges, 
				  "Avatars of the Tortise"

     ... the machinery of the world is much too complex for the
simplicity of men
				- Jorge Luis Borges, "Paradiso, I, 32"

     ... cladistics is merely a method. This is both its strength and
ultimately a source of sterility ...
				- Jon Coddington, CLADISTICS 6(4), 381

     I have now conducted you to the doors of nature's house, where its
mysteries lie hidden. If you cannot enter, because the doors are too
narrow, then abstract and contract yourself mathematically into an
atom and you will easily enter, and when you gave come out again, tell
me what miraculous things you saw.
				- Thomas Harriot, in a letter on optics
				   to Johannes Kepler (1606)

     Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things, you get 
used to them.
				- John von Neumann

     To the uninitiated, a molecule of Gallium Arsenide is probably
about as interesting as an empty box of Belgian chocolates.
				- GEC-MARCONI Advertisement

     We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
				- Ernest Rutherford

     The solution looks considerably less elegant than the simple
theoretical correlation which I had originally envisioned, but it has
the indisputable advantage of being correct ...
				- George Gamov

     Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion.
				- T. H. Huxley

     In an ultimate sense I cannot know what I do in this place -- yet
I do ultimate things.
				- Peter Shaffer, EQUUS

     Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school
of the genuis.
				- Gibbon

     Searching for extraterrestrials could be very damaging to your
career.
				- Frank Drake

     Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are 
born to it.
				- Thomas Harris, 
				  THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

     If you have come to help me
     You are wasting your time
     But if you have come because your
     liberation is tied up with mine,
     Then let us work together.
				-Lilla Watson

     How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty with me, 
     and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If
     you comply with my condition, I will leave them and you 
     in peace; but if you refuse I will glut the maw of death,
     until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining
     friends.

				- Mary Shelley,
				  FRANKENSTEIN

     "I have the advantage," Jock answered grandly, "of not knowing too
much about the subject. Facts are always a handicap in philosophical
debate."
				- Robert A. Heinlein,
				  FARMER IN THE SKY

     "There may be something in what you say," he admitted. "It has
always seemed to be me to be decidedly inequitable that only the
intelligent minority should be allowed to benefit from a university 
education."
				- Tom Sharpe,
				  PORTERHOUSE BLUE

     "You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, 
because you might not get there."
				- Yogi Berra

     "Let's drive fast and eat cheese!"
                                - John Lithgow,
                                  3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN


		HEARTHSIDE

	Half across the world from me
	Lie the lands I'll never see --
	I, whose longing lives and dies
	Where a ship has sailed away;
	I, that never close my eyes
	But to look upon Cathay.

	Things I may not know nor tell
	Wait, where older waters swell;
	Ways that flowered at Sappho's tread,
	Winds that sighed in Homer's strings,
	Vibrant with the singing dead,
	Golden with the dust of wings.

	Under deeper skies than mine,
	Quiet valleys dip and shine.
	Where their tender grasses heal
	Ancient scars of trench and tomb
	I shall never walk; nor kneel
	Where the bones of poets bloom.

	If I seek a lovelier part,
	Where I travel goes my heart;
	Where I stray my thought must go;
	With me wanders my desire.
	Best to sit and watch the snow,
	Turn the lock, and poke the fire.

			- Dorothy Parker
			   (From ENOUGH ROPE)


     "Built by engineers. Used by normal people."
			- Hewlett-Packard slogan


		MONOCHROME

	Once the screen was really silver
	Once the world was shades of gray
	Come inside and touch the romance
	Fred and Ginger dance the night away
	Let the shutter frame your vision
	Let the sprockets pull you down
	Eighteen frames, the speed of silence
	Twenty-four, the speed of sound
	Monochrome
	Bogie in a trench coat, standing alone
	Monochrome

	Mister Laurel, Mister Hardy
	Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd
	Can you hear the silent laughter
	Echo in the whispering celluloid
	Did you long to be with Garbo
	Who was your romantic queen
	Was it Colbert, Loy, or Harlow
	Did you pine for Norma Jean?
	Monochrome
	Drift to sleep and dream in sepiatone
	Monochrome

	Dress in tails with Ronald Coleman
	Grant and Niven, perfect gents
	Say Klaatu Barada Nikto
	Do you know what Rosebud really meant
	Gone to dust and still they play on
	Faded days stay crystal clear
	All the stuff that dreams are made on
	Long as you and I are here
	Monochrome
	Boris Karloff shambles from the unknown
	Monochrome

	Why do you say there's no color
	Dietrich was the Blue Angel
	Duke and Monty rode Red River
	Leslie Howard's Scarlet Pimpernel
	Fairbanks was a bold Black Pirate
	Cagney's White Heat burned me cold
	There's a panchromatic rainbow
	To a silver-halide pot of gold
	Monochrome
	Though my valley's green no longer, it's home
	Monochrome

	Let me catch a bus with Gable
	Grand Hotels for all my nights
	Busby Berkeley tunes are playing
	Through the window, Chaplin's City Lights
	Wander down the aisles together
	Take a lover, find a friend
	Dance to Bernard Herrmann's music
	Till the title card that reads The End
	Monochrome
	Carbon arcs in darkness lighting me home
	In monochrome
	Monochrome
	With a cast of thousands, no one's alone
	With monochrome

			- John M. Ford
			   (from HOW MUCH FOR JUST THE PLANET?)


	'But I have tenure!"
	"Oh well, I suppose if you stick around a third-rate 
	  institution long enough, they have to reward you for
          your lack of initiative somehow."
                                - Jane Curtin and John Lithgow,
                                  3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN

	"Grad school is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life."
				- John Rogers

	"Anyone who fights for the future lives in it today."
				- Ayn Rand

	"All this is fact. Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, 
	  it is fact that requires explanation."
				- Marilynne Robinson, 
			          HOUSEKEEPING

	"To oppose something is to maintain it."

	"To learn which questions are unaswerable. and not to answer
	  them; this skill is most needful in times of stress and
	  darkness."
				- Ursula K. LeGuin,
				  THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS

	"I remember as a boy reading accounts of `scientific mysteries,'
in the sort of books that have successive chapters on the Loch Ness 
monster, yetis, UFOs, and the Easter Island monuments. ... The emotional
appeal of the more exotic of these mystery accounts is clear: Not only
are such events alluringly weird, but they seem to offer effortless
access to profound and exclusive knowledge. Quickly the reader feels
as though he or she glimpses important truths that the stodgy scientific
world, or conspiratorial governments, have overlooked, misunderstood,
or denied. Accompanyting this feeling of exclusivity may be the
self-rightious satisfaction that comes with disdain for more 
conventional explanations. If others do not share one's own privileged 
viewpoint, then at least, their science must be poor, and at worst, 
perhaps they are aliens themselves."

				- Christopher F. Chyba,
				  "What Happened at Tungaska?",
				  THE NEO NEWS, 3(2), 1997, 1-2.

	"Escaping the dangers of applied science is one thing. Doing the
simple and manifest good which applied science has put in our power is 
another, more difficult, more demanding of human qualities, and in the 
long run far more enriching to us all."


    "It seems to me that engaging in immediate debate on each
     specific point closes one's mind for good and all. Debating
     gives most of us much more psychological satisfaction than
`    thinking does; but it deprives us of whatever chance there
     is of getting closer to the truth. It seems preferable to
     me to sit back and let what has been said sink in -- I don't
     pretend this is altogether easy -- and then, after a longish
     interval, with the advantage of what I've heard and of new
     knowledge, see what modifications I should make ..."

				- C.P. Snow, 
				  "The Two Cultures: A Second Look"

	"The academic mind is addicted to problems and averse to
solutions, since a problem is a nice little earner but a solution 
requires the unfortunate solver to find a new justification for the 
continuation of funding."

				- David Gaffan,
				  "Book Review: THE MIND-BRAIN 
				    CONTINUIM (ed. Llinas/Churchland)",
				  TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE, 
				  1(5), 194, 1997.

	"Computers are irrelevant."
				- Tom West
				  (quoted in Tracy Kidder,
				   THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE)

	"The ignorant worship and fear. 
	 Scientists worship and investigate."
				- Randy Allen Harris,
				  THE LINGUISTICS WARS

	"We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that
	 we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgements we
	 can usually make for ourselves."

	"If art isin't entertainment, what is it? Punishment?"

				 - Pauline Kael
				   (Quoted in Will Brantley (ed.).
				     CONVERSATIONS WITH PAULINE KAEL)

	Atkinson's First Law of Computing: All computers and all
	computing are simply a combination of a very, very large
	number of very, very trivial things.

				  - Tom Atkinson

        To be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and
        happiest of marriages.
        
                                  - Susan B. Anthony


			PIAZZA PIECE

	I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
	To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
	And listen to an old man not at all,
	They want the young men's whispering and sighing.
	But see the roses on your trellis dying
	And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
	For I must have my lovely lady soon,
	I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

	I am a lady young in beauty waiting
	Until my true love comes, and then we kiss.
	But what grey man among the vines is this
	Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
	Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
	I am a lady young in beauty waiting. 

			- John Crowe Ransom

        "For all my years, the only piece of wisdom I've acquired
          is that time doesn't have to move forward. The noblest
          achievement of the imagination is to make it run some other
          way, and terminate in beauty and forgiveness."

                         - David Gelernter,
                           1939: THE LOST WORLD OF THE FAIR

       I call heaven and earth to witness before you this day that
       I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the 
       curse. Therefore, choose life.

                         - Deuteronomy

	Ten years of successful work tends to make a man touchy, dogmatic, 
	intolerant of correction, and abominably self-centered.

			- William Osler
			  (Michael Bliss, WILLIAM OSLER: 
			    A LIFE IN MEDICINE, p. 248)

      "Arrr, the laws of Nature be a harsh mistress."

			- Bender, FUTURAMA

      Anyone who works for posterity is working for an ungrateful client.

                        - Paul Schrader

      What is the thing we crave most in life? The sense that someone
       somewhere remembers and loves us. Even better if we love them in
       return. Anything can be endured if that idea holds fast.

			- Martin Cruz Smith, RED SQUARE

      If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by
       spectacular error.

			- John Kenneth Galbraith


* Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink share the
   bottle. To do otherwise makes you appear selfish and un-neighbourly.
* If a lady is present, gentlemen are urged to forgo smoking cigars and
   pipes as the odor of same may be repugnant to the gentler sex.
   Chewing tobacco is permitted but spit with the wind not against it.
* Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort during the cold weather.
   Hogging robes will not be tolerated and offenders will be made to 
   ride with the driver.
* Don't snore loudly or use your fellow passenger's shoulder for a 
   pillow. He (or she) may not understand and friction may result.
* Fire arms may be kept on your person for emergencies. Do not fire for
   pleasure or shoot at wild animals as the sound riles the horses.
* In the event of runaway horses remain calm. Leaping from the coach 
   will leave you injured, at the mercy of the elements, hostile 
   Indians & hungry coyotes.
* Forbidden topics of discussion are stage coach robbers and Indian 
   uprisings.
* Gentlemen guilty of unchivalrous behavior towards lady passengers 
   will be put off the stage. It is a long walk back.

	Passenger Rules, Barstow and Helena Stagecoach Company (1876)
         (from Jaffe, M. (2000) THE GILDED DINOSAUR: THE FOSSIL WAR
           BETWEEN E.D. COPE AND O.C. MARSH AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN
           SCIENCE, pp. 168-169)
  

      How do I go about writing a script? I sit down on a chair.
      I pull out a typewriter -- or computer now -- and just try to
      hit the keys. The whole problem is to hit them in the right
      order. That's the only problem really.

			- Krzystof Kieslowski
	
      The role of the critic is to help people see what is in the work,
      what is in it that shouldn't be, what is not in it that could be.
      He is a good critic if he helps people understand more about the 
      work than they could see for themselves; he is a great critic,
      if by his understanding and feeling for the work, by his passion,
      he can excite people so that they want to experience more of the
      art that is there, waiting to be siezed. He is not necessarily
      a bad critic if he makes errors in judgment (Infallible taste is
      inconceivable; what could it be measured against?) He is a bad
      critic if he does not awaken the curiosity, enlarge the interests
      and understanding of his audience. The art of the critic is to
      transmit his knowledge of and enthusiasm for art to others.

      ... theory distorts experience ... and helps us to see more
      sharply for having done so ...

	- Pauline Kael,"Circles and Squares: Joys and Sarris"
 
     To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, 
      than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to 
      his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness
      which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife;
      but where other powers of entertainment are wanting,
      the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as
      are given.

     "For what do we live, but to make sport for our
       neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

	- Jane Austen, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

     "Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous?"

        - Calvin and Hobbes

     Q: The menu in our cafeteria shows that enchiladas are available 
        "Tue.-Fri." When I ordered one on a Wednesday, I was told that 
	enchiladas are available on Tuesday and Friday, not Tuesday 
	through Friday. When I informed the cafeteria manager that this
	sign was incorrect, she seemed shocked and refused to change
	the sign. Please help determine who is correct.
     A: Although the sign was incorrect, I'm not sure you should annoy
        the person who provides the enchiladas.

	- Website of THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE

    "When I was small, my mother said to me, 'Elwood, in this world,
      you must be either oh so smart or very pleasant.' For many years,
      I was smart. I recommend pleasant."

        - Mary Chase, HARVEY

    "I suppose it can said that I'm an absent-minded driver. It's true 
      that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but 
      on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never 
      gotten credit for it."

      	- Glenn Gould (quoted in Kevin Brazzana (2003) WONDROUS STRANGE: 
	   THE LIFE AND ART OF GLENN GOULD, p. 329)

    "Being famous and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee."

        - Chuck Yeager

    "... this diversion, although pleasant, is not true. Things never
      happened thus."
    "Oh, but it is true. Things need not have happened to be true. Tales
      and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are
      dust and ashes, and forgot."

	- Neil Gaiman, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", THE SANDMAN

    "That's screaming! A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming."

        - BARBARELLA

    "All you need for an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

        - MY MAN GODFREY